POST #168: ON BECOMING INVISIBLE

While shopping at Trader Joe’s today, I passed an interesting looking man, late 50s, 60 maybe. I glanced at him but received a blank stare in return. It took a moment for me to realize that he hadn’t noticed me at all – I was an invisible old(er) woman.

I think it has more to do with age than gender since I’ve heard similar complaints from older men; they too become invisible with age. But it is worse for women, especially good-looking ones who have become accustomed to being admired, flirted with, able to manipulate both men and women with their looks. They have a tough time adjusting to being invisible, but hey, that’s the price we pay for growing old. What was the line in some ‘50s novel I once read? “Die young and have a good looking corpse.”

There’s something to be said for being invisible. You don’t have to put on makeup when you go to the supermarket, or a bra when you go walking at the gym. You don’t have to have some guy leering at you wondering if you’re wearing underpants.  Nobody sees you; invisibility is a protective cloak. It allows you to be the observer, not the observed.

I don’t mind becoming sexually invisible as I age but I do resent being treated as intellectually disabled, as is often the case. There’s a perverse side of me that takes great pleasure in the look on the faces of the younger generation when they discover I know more about the subject under discussion than they do. Yes. I do know who Sartre is and I can also quote Baudelaire (badly).  In other periods of history, older meant wiser, someone to be looked up to, listened to. Obviously, that no longer the case.

I was chatting with some friends recently about this subject and we were reminded of a wonderful c1970 movie starring Ruth Gordon: “Harold & Maude.” Maude is a full of life seductress approaching her 80^th birthday - with a lot to teach her adolescent lover. In the words of the immortal baseball coach, Leo Durocher: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”