The Invisible Women
Mature Women Conversations Part 2
A few years back when I was still styling hair, my 40th or 45th birthday, I can’t remember which, was coming up and my client matter of fact says, “Oh that’s the year you become invisible."
What? I was taken aback. Invisible? This is the first time anyone had ever said this to me, I’d never heard of this. I asked her what she meant by that, and she obligingly educated me on the start of an ageing woman’s plight. You know how you’ll catch an admiring glance from a stranger most likely a man, ya well those stops, and you start to be overlooked or looked past, you’ve just become an older woman. Unnoticed, under appreciated, irrelevant, taken for granted, unattractive apparently......invisible........I was stunned! Does this really happen? Obviously, this made a shocking impression on me because I began to take notice, to see if there was any truth behind this new revelation.
I didn’t notice it immediately but gradually it became more and more apparent to me that sadly this whole theory might just be true after all. Might be....is true.
It’s a constant barrage of anti-aging serums and creams and treatments, like our age is something to be disgusted by, we feel immense pressure to tap into some sort of fountain of youth, to stay seen, to be relevant and not overlooked. Like somehow all the accomplishments of careers, running households, raising human beings to be good people, raising husbands and all the astonishing feats we’ve managed to juggle and execute don’t matter anymore, we are just old and a woman. Men get to become distinguished and accomplished and women just get to be invisible.
Now when I first started processing this, I thought the invisibility factor was all superficial all appearance. I’m starting to rethink this now. Now I’m starting to realise it maybe be far deeper than that. See women are the nurturers we must be we are the givers of life and to create a life inside our wombs and then nurture, protect and guide those people into adulthood takes everything we’ve got! It’s selfless work it, requires you to give pieces of yourself everyday. And in that process while you are giving so freely of the very essence of yourself to get the job done, many others see this open well and start to dip in and take some for themselves. Now the well seems like an infinite aquifer so no one seems too bothered to replace what they’ve taken, and we’ve so generously given until...... until its empty.
What was it that made the light shine so brightly inside? We can’t even remember because we’ve been so busy taking care of everyone else. We don’t shine anymore, and society sure doesn’t encourage any sort of reverence and respect for all that we’ve held together and accomplished, with style, grace and thoughtfulness, strength, knowledge and determination. And suddenly we look around and there is nothing left we’ve been used up, chewed up and spit out. We cease too exists, we are a mere fragment of what we used to be, we have become invisible.
I think this is the deeper side of this truth, and once our light has been extinguished it is a tough fight to find it again, we are fighting a whole system that works against us. But it is time, time to change this outrageous narrative from invisible to invincible!
Shine so bright my Sista’s that everyone can’t help but stop and take notice!
A. xo