Sailing The Age Bar
I watched @netflix_in #FabulousLives. I loved Neelam as a kid & even more now. At a self-confessed 50, she exudes the understated confidence that comes from riding life’s ups & downs. But there’s also a vulnerability, the hesitation about her looks, the uncertainty of comeback roles. Unlike the brittle tantrums of the others. This is owning age well, not resisting it.
People say I look younger & expect me to take it as a compliment. I do not want to be 25. I’ve already been there. I didn’t carry myself with the same ease because my body was newer to me & it held painful things. My life was not my own. Each day was surviving the control games by men, family, authority figures & social systems while trying to find identity.
At 41, many of those battles are over, some won, some lost. I don’t bear most of the scars anymore. But I have reduced vision, longer lasting hangovers, more medicines, supplements & monitoring needed where earlier a day would run along carelessly. I am not careless anymore. It’s a new story of me so it annoys me to be force-cast into an outdated one.
I have haters saying I should ‘act my age’. It means shut up & stay invisible. It’s ageism. I also get people demanding I take care of them or tolerate misbehaviour because I’m ‘wiser’. This is ageism too because why does 41 have to look a specific way?
In the show, the daughters of the main cast seem very young to me. Not in an appealing way. Their rawness makes my interest wane. There’s a mind-numbing uniformity because after all, their youth is as yet unformed & only trying on various costumes, moods, identities. The mothers have such distinct stories, their choices, their regrets, the possibility of plot twists in their stories.
There’s a bit about the term MILF. I’ve dismissed it as an excuse for Oedipal syndrome. I stand by that. I’m not interested in being anyone’s babysitter/sextoy.
But I also believe our sexual desires carry clues to our hopes & needs. I must admit, this one implies at least recognition & admiration of the wealth of age.
At 41 I’m on the same journey I was on at 25 or 33-to write who I am in this moment. Why impose one role on me?
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