Courageous Vision at Midlife and Beyond

Let's Stop Promoting the Narrative that We Become Invisible as We Age!

Photo by alpay tonga on Unsplash

This morning, scrolling through Facebook, I chanced upon a woman’s writing about midlife invisibility, a phenomenon aging women are frequently warned to expect. In recent years, I have read multiple pieces by women on this topic. The friend who shared this morning’s post introduced it by saying that its snarky honesty inspired her. Since I have been called snarky my whole life, I read on. 

     The author wrote vividly of stepping onto a beach in a tankini that replaced the bikinis of her younger days. She heard no cat-calls or whistles and saw no smiles of approval. It dawned on her that no one was looking. She was free from all scrutiny and didn’t need to fear criticism.

    I read on, rooting for her, because each time we claim more freedom, we help other women find theirs. What she felt free to do in that moment was to reach down and pull the crotch of her bathing suit out of her butt crack without hiding this movement.

I chuckled briefly. There is a delightful liberation in not worrying about ridiculous judgements given to tending harmless bodily needs. But I also felt let down.  It takes two seconds to pull a bathing suit crotch into place. I have done this many times in public, as a little girl learning how to swim, as a teenager, and a grown woman. I have never given a damn what anyone thinks. 

    But, as a therapist for women with eating disorders, I know women are carrying a ton of embodied shame. I looked up from my phone, wondering how many women live into their 40s fearing someone might watch with an ultra-puritanical sneer or a pussy-grabber’s lust if they dare to briefly adjust their bathing suit a few centimeters. 

     Making our oppression even worse is that just feet away from those of us ashamed to adjust the crotch of a modest tankini, there are at least a couple young women walking around in thongs. A thong bikini bottom is literally a wedgie created by male fashion designers so that female butts can be in full public display, a kind of visibility young women are encouraged to risk, while the men on the beach are all wearing long baggie trunks.

      I swiped out of Facebook, hoping the author intended her writing to evoke sadness, anger, and impatience for women everywhere to find and speak out for a much larger and bolder freedom. These unsettling feelings demanded I write a response. I went to my laptop, intending to jot down a few quick paragraphs. Instead this writing claimed my attention during most of my free hours for the rest of the weekend, and then more hours of careful revision yesterday and today. 

    I  have always felt resistance toward the premise of midlife invisibility. Most midlife invisibility reflections seem to lament a loss of visibility equated with feeling seen as younger women. But were we? 

     An object can be visible and not seen. If you look at a tree as you walk past it on the sidewalk, you see an object you call a tree. You might even say, “Oh, how beautiful that tree is with its spring blossoms!”  If you sit by that tree and look meditatively, suddenly you start to discover so much you never saw before. The tree becomes more alive, complex, and real. That is the difference between being visible and being seen.  All my life I have been visible, but only rarely have I been seen.

     I can remember thrills of excitement as a 20-year-old woman each time I was ogled by a handsome middle-aged art gallery owner who often stood outside his gallery in the afternoon as I walked to town from my college apartment. I turned the corner hoping he would be there. His gaze made me feel as if I radiated with a powerful glamor that I had not known I possessed.  His eyes said, “Oh how beautiful that young woman is in her youthful blossoming.”

     In my 50s, I felt some grief when I realized it has become rare for any man to react to my walking past him with even hints of the desire I used to effortlessly conjure. But, even as a young woman, when I received a man’s lusty gaze, I knew these looks were on a confusing spectrum ranging from playful appreciation to dangerous predation. And, in every case, I felt visible but not seen. Visible as a sexual object, as a passing fantasy.  

    Now, as a woman far into midlife, I do not feel invisible. People see me still. Babies and children smile at me. Teenagers, anxious and in need of kindness, are relieved when I smile at them. Middle-aged women see me as a compatriot. Men see me too and look quickly away, disinterested.  For all of them, I am still a thing that exists, another human body on the sidewalk or the beach. They see an older body, saggy, but spry and not limping or ready for knee replacements, a motherly or grandmotherly figure, a calm and non-threatening stranger. For men, I hold no glamor.  I am a non-sexual object now.

     When possible, I assert my visibility. I stand tall and make eye-contact as I walk in public places. I let myself take up space and dare people to see a wise, courageous, strong hearted, deep-thinking woman in their midst. 

      I don’t waste my time wishing I was a desirable sexual object. Usually, when men glance away disinterested after a quick look at my body, I am relieved. As objects themselves, not many male bodies over the age of 50 are all that sexually attractive either! Every once in a while, when an attractive young man is heading toward me, I channel my father, who at 80 admitted he let himself enjoy the sight of young bikini-clad women on the Florida beach, saying with a shrug, “There is no harm in looking.” No young stud will see me as a sexual object, but I can him, with harmless fantasy. Turn-about is fair play.  Recently, another interesting trend has developed.  When I am out walking my beautiful, friendly, smart, and goofy black lab in the park, more than one middle-aged man has exclaimed, before thinking how it would land, “Great looking dog!” Next time that happens, I plan to respond, “She takes after me!” short, sweet, and with a flirtatious lit as he darts away.

      With much less focus on sexual attractiveness, I can much more patiently see other people, not as desirable or undesirable objects, but as living, complex, struggling, interesting beings with private hurts, and unmet longing. I practice bringing a caring gaze to others. An admiring whistle might boost my self-esteem temporarily, but learning to see with love deepens my bond with humanity.

    Do I miss being appreciated as a sexual object? Sometimes, briefly. But what I really miss, and have always missed, have always needed, at every age, is to be seen in a way that values, nourishes, and respects me as an equal. So, in response to my midlife compatriots, and younger women too, I must ask:  Why settle for visibility? What women really need is to be deeply and carefully seen!”

     As I crossed the threshold into midlife, I have occasionally read older women describing another phenomenon of much more interest to me than supposed invisibility. These wise, older women write about midlife as the time they come into their fullest strength and tap into vast latent creative wellsprings, starting around the age of 55. I have found what they shared is very true. 

    As I have tapped into this deep reservoir of latent creative energy, I found that midlife is changing how I see myself and the world, awakening in me increasingly sharp clarity.  My mind grows clearer. My focus shifts to more ensouling and wisdom-deepening inner drives. I have woken up from a spell that made me focus my energy on finding approval from the handsome prince. The hormonal drive to mate and raise offspring has abated. But the spell I lived in was much more than hormonal. It is systemic. Inside that spell, I kept seeking permission, validation, and inclusion in a social order designed by men to keep me relegated toward a minor role as caretaker and support staff. As each year passes, I naturally appear older, and society will objectify me as weak and useless. Meanwhile, my vision is growing irrepressibly stronger. I see what is really going on. I recognize bullshit, gaslighting, injustice, oppression, and all the cruel and subtle ways in which women are disempowered. Midlife has given me vision, not invisibility.

     This increasingly potent vision sees the vast reservoir of fiery, creative, passionate energy that was held down inside me as I waited and hoped for men – my father, my brother, the man living in my house, the male bore-bomb droning on at the meeting without letting the women at the table speak, the men elected to government in disproportionate numbers – to finally stop objectifying me and to start seeing me with curiosity and respect, listening to me, and looking with compassion into my hunger, pain, longing, complexity, and real desires. 

     As I see the futility in waiting to be seen by others, I give myself deep consideration and validation. I more courageously meet my needs without further hesitation, real needs, not the slight adjustment of a bathing suit crotch. I clearly see my deepest needs, understanding that tending them will require me to rebuild the foundation of my life. Instead of turning away in fear of this necessary change, I keep looking and find my deepening vision offers a clearer way forward, revealing long avoided paths.

     Clear vision, seeing through the old spell, and breaking free from it, means we can’t keep living in the same old way. Change can be terrifying and in terror we can collapse back into the old spell, return to the familiar, disempowering rules, the old trance. But midlife vision shows us our vast potential and the life we must free ourselves to live. 

     For me, that freedom meant deciding to live independently rather than continue to squander my well-being by taking care of a partner who doesn't care for himself in basic ways, let alone care for our relationship.  To find the courage to make this choice, I had to see through my own internalized gaslighting, a part that fears repercussions if I attend to my needs and echoes societal messages about how to be a good woman. This part insisted others would not see my needs as valid, and would objectify me, call me a bad, selfish, angry woman for ending a relationship and refusing the still-lauded role of self-less caretaker. As long as this shaming voice prevailed, I kept living in discomfort, afraid to make needed adjustments in order to free myself of the emotional, psychological, and physically-exhausting pain of caretaking, people-pleasing, and self-sacrifice staying in the relationship required of me. After breaking from this old old pattern personally, I now find that clear vision and anger go together. Anger and real freedom go together too.

       That is why glib lamentations about the loss of the male, desiring, sexual gaze which hint at a new sense of freedom but cushion their message within easy to read, easy to tolerate humor leave me feeling impatient. Of course, well crafted humor can help us ease our pain and see ourselves in new ways. But, for me, too often the humor of these midlife writings feels like playing it safe, like seeking approval, like hiding our deeper truth because we fear being judged, like compliance and restriction in the guise of comedy. Our lifelong grief and anger have been silenced. We expect to be criticized for being too loud, too demanding, too strident, to needy, or too shrill, so we cloak our real experience underneath humor, just like we hide our hand adjusting a wedgie under a terry-cloth cover-up.

     My sadness, anger, and impatience insists that I ask: Do we really need, as midlife women, to promote the narrative that we somehow become invisible as we age, while at the same time the misogynistic forces in society that are rising in power are flooding the airwaves with messages that women’s value is in childbearing (another way of sexually objectifying us) and that menopausal women and childless cat ladies have no value, no stake in democratic society, while old men and terrible fathers do?

     My midlife vision makes me speak bluntly. Women have been sexual objects in a misogynistic patriarchy that has wedged itself into the crevices of the human spirit for at least six thousand years. In midlife, we see with increasing clarity the cracks in the facade that this social order traps us in. In midlife, as women, we become free from having to comply with being looked at in the same old ways. With that freedom, we can find visionary wisdom that sees what is needed and demands necessary change. Let us use this vision to focus, with clear and steady aim, on pulling the deeply uncomfortable life-long, generationally-damaging misogynistic wedgie out of our soulful depths! When we do this, we will unleash our wild creative energy as truly free women, rise up in rebellion, and change this troubled world!!!!