Be an Outrageous Older Woman

Part One

Becoming Outrageous

Why and How to Reinvent Yourself in Your Older Years

Chapter 1

Don’t Rage; Be Outrageous

Rage is in the middle of the word outrageous. Rage occurs when we are frustrated, ignored, hurt, trivialized, denied needed resources, insulted, treated as second-class individuals, and in other ways injured. In our society, women are often discriminated against when they age. This can be as major and open as not being hired or as subtle as being treated as though we are invisible in society and perfunctorily at social gatherings. When we brood about this and take no action, our rage or anger often turns inward, eventually developing into depression or passivity.

However, we can move beyond rage by being outrageous older women, refusing to accept the stereotypes or slights. This book will give you recipes for coming out of rage and into being a magnificent older woman who takes what she can from life to be happy, to be productive, and, above all, to laugh. We need joy in our lives as we age. There are decrements in aging, but we can be creative about increments.

As I grew older, I learned that if you are outrageous enough, good things happen. You stop being invisible and become validated. For example, in 1987, I decided to call myself a R.A.S.P. I had never been a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) because, among other disqualifications, I am the wrong ethnic group and too fat. But I figured I could RASP my way though my older years fighting for my own rights and my own joy and for those of other older women. To me, R.A.S.P. stood for Remarkable Aging Smart Person, and I painted it on a T-shirt and sweatshirt to handle all seasons. I also made a R.A.S.P. bottom by putting masking tape over the button of a disliked politician and writing R.A.S.P. with a magic marker—bright red, of course.

Other women suggested R.A.S.P. also stood for, as the situation warranted. Ravishing Aging Sexy Person or Radical Aging Strategic Person. Wherever I went, I invited mature women to join R.A.S.P., explaining that it was a treat organization because there were no dues, meetings, newsletters, or financial appeals. Other R.A.S.P. buttons began to appear. By 1990, the prestigious American Aging Society sent me an unsolicited letter addressed to Ruth Jacobs, President of R.A.S.P., inviting me and my members to join. If the American Aging Society says R.A.S.P. is real, it must be. It’s no longer just my private joke. So now I ask you to join R.A.S.P.

In this book, you will learn how to start Rasping. What I will offer comes from more than my personal experience. It grew from the research, teaching, and advocacy on women and aging that I have done since I earned my Ph.D. in sociology in 1969, at age forty-five (after getting my B.S. at age 40 while my children were in school). I am the older women’s Dr. Ruth, come to tell the truth, and I hope by the time I’m done, you’ll think I am the better one.

My research and my work on behalf of older women has been supported by such agencies as the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Stone Center for Women’s Development and Services at Wellesley (College, and the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, where I have been affiliated since the seventies. I have learned a great deal from wonderful aging women who have taken my Older Women Surviving and Thriving workshops and from women I have interviewed for my research books and articles. Many of them, like me, had to overcome the internalized cultural bias against aging, especially against aging women.

My own crisis of aging came when I was sixty, an age that signaled to me the end of midlife. When I was nearly sixty-one, I wrote in a poem how I had conquered my fears.

Becoming Sixty¹

There were terror and anger

at coming into sixty.

Would I give birth

only to my old age?

Now near sixty-one

I count the gifts

that sixty gave.

A book flowed from my life

to those who needed it

and love flowed back to me.

In a yard that had seemed full,

space for another garden appeared.

I took my aloneness to Quaker meeting,

and my outstretched palms were filled.

I walked further along the beach,

swam longer in more sacred places,

danced the spiral dance,

reclaimed daisies for women

in my ritual for a precious friend

and received poet’s wine

from a new friend who came

in the evening of my need.

In addition to the things listed in the poem, I tried many other new activities the year I turned sixty. By sixty-three, I was really enjoying my older womanhood and asking myself what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

Please write down now what you want to do with the rest of your life.

When I did my list. I discovered I no longer wanted to work full-time teaching and chairing the sociology department at Clark University, and I resigned to teach only part-time elsewhere and to do other things. Writing the list made me confront my life and change it. It is easy to stick to a known, safe-but-uncomfortable identity. We have to shake ourselves up once in a while. Writing to ourselves can give us access to our deep wishes as my poem that follows did for me.

At Sixty-three²

What I want for the rest of my life

is to live simply and joyfully

close to nature and God

ministering, as I am led to do

to people in new ways,

communicating with my children

as equals without dependency

or guilt on either side

or the reliving of old history.

What I want for the rest of my life

is to accept that in my living

I made serious mistakes

but did the best I could at the time.

I want to stop blaming myself

and have as much compassion and respect

for myself as I have for others.

I want to travel to new places

to witness and be touched

by the stories of others

then tell their stories

in my books and poetry

to help people see themselves

in others and know we are all

kindred spirits within the spirit,

and that what injures one of us

insults all of us

while the triumph of one of us

is a mountain climbed by all.

What I want for the rest of my life

is to deal gracefully and graciously

with the decrements of aging

so that by example and testimony

I give others the courage

to see that the missions and ministry

of the aged are as important as of youth

and are important to youth.

Finally, I want to meet my death knowing

that I lived fully, returning to life

the talents and time given me by grace.

Aging gives us a chance to know ourselves and to learn the meaning of life. I have learned, as you should, to enjoy the perks of being olden When a passenger, I happily accept the front seat in two-door cars that require pretzel crawling to get into the back; I am delighted when the sixteen-year-old movie cashiers ask, Senior citizen ticket? which is half-price. I graciously accept snow shoveling help. But I will not tolerate being considered mentally incompetent. In response to the people who, in this youth-oriented society, try to curry favor by calling me and other older women young woman, I say:

Don’t call me a young woman;

it’s not a compliment or courtesy

but rather a grating discourtesy.

Being old is a hard won achievement

not something to be brushed aside

treated as infirmity or ugliness

or apologized away by young woman.

I am an old woman, a long liver.

I’m proud of it. I revel in it.

I wear my gray hair and wrinkles

as badges of triumphant survival

and I intend to grow even older.

Don’t call me a young woman.

I was a young woman for years

but that was then and this is now.

I was a mid-life woman for a time

and I celebrated that good span.

Now I am somebody magnificent, new,

a seer, wise woman, old proud crone,

an example and mentor to the young

who need to learn old women’s wisdom.

I look back on jobs well done

and learn to do different tasks now.

I think great thoughts and share them.

Don’t call me a young woman.

You reveal your own fears of aging.

Maybe you’d better come learn from

all of us wonderful old women

how to take the sum of your life

with all us experience and knowledge

and show how a fully developed life

can know the joy of a past well done

and the joy of life left to live.

Unfortunately, many women who are now older were brought up on seven negative P’s, or what I call the Pea Pod lifestyle.

Patriarchy—the systemic subordination of women at work, at home, and in the structural arrangements of society.

Patterning—the pink blanket syndrome, whereby socially acceptable behavior for women, especially older women, is to conform to implicit rules that they be nurturing, nonsexual, self-sacrificing, restrained, passive, and modest.

Propriety—the expectation that women be dignified and accept narrow roles.

Politeness—the demand that women never show anger, always smile, and say thank you even when they are ignored and insulted.

Perfectionism—the requirement that women do everything right for everybody and be neat while they perform. This immobilizes some women, who are thus afraid to try because they might be seen as imperfect. Inaction gets you nowhere.

Pretty—the notion that women are only valuable if they are decorative and that older women are not valuable because they are not considered pretty.

Passivity—waiting on external forces versus making one’s own decisions and taking action.

Even young women are troubled by these P’s. In fact, twenty-year-old student nurses in my sociology class at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Boston insisted upon adding Pretty to my original six. They, as do many at their age, worried about what would happen when the beauty accolade passed to women younger than they.

As outrageous older women, we need to substitute five positive P’s.

Pride—self-esteem for who we are and what we have done in life, whether it was working in the home, a career, or volunteering. Pride in our gender and age is appropriate.

Power—older women are the largest category in the United States. With the aging of the baby boomers and our greater longevity than males, our category will grow even larger. If we organized, we might improve society.

Possibilities—there are many possibilities for new roles as we age. When you turn MOM upside down, it spells WOW, wonderful old women, wise old women, witty old women, wicked old women. We can put on new hats.

Passion—we continue to have sexual passion and passion for life and our causes.

Proactivity—we can take charge of our lives and take charge wherever we are. We are seasoned and have experience and knowledge.

At workshops, I have been asking older women to tell me about the outrageous things they have done that epitomize the positive P’s. Their exploits have delighted me.

Seasoned women have: fought age discrimination in the workplace; moved across the country; participated in public demonstrations; run for public office; written outrageous poems and letters; told off politicians and difficult husbands and children; started businesses late in life; taken adventure trips alone; and done many, many other things.

Mostly, they have raised their self-esteem and improved their public image. They have shed their internalized ageism and ventured into new roles, picking themselves up and trying again if they failed. They have made new connections and created new groups. They have relieved themselves of anger and developed better identities.

Sadly, some women deny their aging. They lie about their ages to themselves and others and like being called young woman, This is not surprising in view of the ageism in society that we internalize. Many of us do not have good models of women who aged well, who were magnificent and outrageous. Often women reject women older than themselves or even women their own age, saying they prefer younger women. They are really rejecting themselves as they age. I hope to help you come to terms with this. And I hope to inspire you to become an Outrageous Older Woman.

Since identity change involves decision and a process, in the next chapter I will give you encouragement, recipes, and examples of identity change for a new you to age outrageously and courageously.

Please note that books and organizations mentioned throughout this book have full citations in the Resource section after the last chapter.

¹This poem was first published in When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, edited by Sandra Martz, Papier-Mache Press, 1987.

²At Sixty-three first appeared in friendly Woman, vol. 8, no. 7. Friendly Woman is published on a rotating basis by Quaker meetings’ women’s groups.

Chapter 2

Changing Identity

Your reaction to the first chapter may be, she’s weird. Who needs to be outrageous—not me. I am satisfied with going quietly and traditionally about my life. That is fine if you are happy.

However, you may be thinking that you would like to change, branch out, become adventurous or even flamboyant or outrageous. Maybe you are bored with your old identity, or it is not serving you well. Perhaps you would like to change but don’t know how. Perhaps you even feel stuck in a stifling identity. If so, this chapter may be useful. It will describe the process through which people go to change themselves. What I say in discussing identity comes out of my sociological research and my work in developing theory. A preliminary version of my identity scheme was presented in 1990 at the Theological Opportunities Program at the Harvard University Divinity School.

Although some people go through life with fairly stable identities, many of us these days seek self-change or have change thrust upon us by dramatic events such as divorce, widowhood, financial change, retirement, illness, bereavement, or other disruptions n our ways of being. Even expected and normal events such as aging or the death of our parents can precipitate life changes that require adjustments in our sense of who we are. Much of our identity comes from involvement in social networks that confirm who we are and from our legation in family, community, ethnic group, occupation or retirement, social class, religion, and gender. Some factors, such as race, are fixed, but others are surprisingly flexible. For example, people change religions or give them up, pass for being of a different ethnic group, and change social class and occupation. Some even alter their appearance and sexual preference.

Some identity change is involuntary, as when others downgrade us and injure our sense of identity by considering us unworthy because we have aged, retired, become disabled or displaced, or are poorer. We then have to do repair work to restore our sense of self. This repair work can take many forms, including seeking therapy or new ways to enhance our status in the world and, hence, our self-esteem and sense of being valuable. Sadly, some people find it very hard to recover from assaults, internalizing the slights. That is, of course, why ageism and other isms are so pernicious. These isms not only decrease opportunities, they assault and damage our sense of identity

Not all identity change, however, is involuntary. The impetus for change can result from precipitators I see as the D factor in life. This D factor may range from discontent or displeasure with being as we are all the way to being in danger. In between these poles of displeasure and danger are other gradations of dissatisfaction such as discomfort, disturbance, dispiritedness or dysfunction, disequilibrium, disruption, dislocation, dispossession, displacement, dismay, disquiet, dysphoria, and disorganization. All of these D’s tend to create depression and anxiety.

The depressed or anxious individual has two choices. She can dig in or she can dig out, perhaps alone and perhaps with help. Diggers-in hug tight to old identities and ways of behaving with more or less success, depending on circumstances. Digging in may require strong, sometimes incredible, defenses and the manipulation or collusion of significant others. A woman must work hard to act her old self and to convince others with a good performance, even a nonfunctional one. Gratification comes from a sense of the familiar even if it is familiar pain. Diggers-in risk stagnation, but they do not require significant others to alter their perceptions of them, nor do they need to alter their self-perceptions.

Diggers-in cling to outmoded roles like protective mothering, which is no longer wanted by adult children. These mothers fear the effort and self-change necessary to create new roles. They are in other words, non-copers who try to tread old paths in a new terrain. Some blame their depression on imagined guilts, God’s will, fate, old age, or whatever, and see no way out. Non-coping diggers-in receive some secondary gratification from the stuckness or depression by having relatives, like concerned children, circling with suggestions the diggers-in decline or are scared to follow. It is like the joke about how many martyrs are needed to change a lightbulb; the answer is none, because they would rather sit in the dark, which they deserve, they think.

Diggers-out, on the other hand, must venture into the unknown, with its uncertainty and insecurity. They must risk failure and be able to handle success. They may lose old associates and roles in the process of creating a new self. They may feel alone and must have the strength to bear that aloneness at a time when their self-system is changing, creating anxiety. The self they recreate may, in the long run, be more functional, but in the interim, there is a shakiness and lack of support.

In my first book. Life After Youth: Female, Forty—What Next?, I described a woman who went back to school in midlife, leaving the bench-sitters in her housing project. The bench-sitters, her chums in the project, were sustaining but not fostering growth. As a late-blooming student, she had to give up the support of these neighbors, who resented her leaving them. At school, she was out of sync with the young students of 3 different social class. In the service of mobility, she experienced isolation. This made her wonder who she was and if what she was doing was worth the loneliness.

I related very much to this woman because my experience, while less difficult, also involved losing a network. When I got my B.S. at age forty, my suburban stay-at-home-mother neighbors gave me a party. When I got my M.A. two years later, there were some congratulations. When three years later I got my Ph.D. and began college teaching, there was dead silence because I had gone beyond the scope of my circle.

Digging out is hard, often stressful, work. Not all diggers-out are the same. In my research, I have found three kinds of diggers-out. The first kind are successful self-copers who can dig out themselves. The second type are diggers-out who are assisted-copers, aided by therapists, friends, relatives, groups, and so forth. The third kind are would-be diggers-out who are frustrated, thwarted, and sabotaged in their coping.

While some women are assisted-copers, others must or prefer to journey unaided in becoming a different person, or a somewhat different person. All diggers-out, however, must act as different people before they feel like different people. Unlike professional actors, they have no director, although assisted-copers may get some direction, or learn to understudy their role models. Frequently, changers feel like hypocrites because they wear masks or play parts before they have deeply internalized their new identities.

The process of self-change, though varying tremendously, has some commonalties for all diggers-out. Most of those I have followed have gone through eight phases in the process of change. These eight phases are: (1) involuntary loss or voluntary rejection of the old identity; (2) mourning the old identity; (3) seeking models or mentors for the new identity; (4) developing and implementing strategies for identity change; (5) seeking confirmation of the new identity from others and self; (6) resisting returning to the old identity; (7) gaining increasing comfort, and even joy, in the new identity, and consolidating it; and (8) repeating the process all over as new life contingencies require still more identity change.

I will go over in detail these eight stages with some illustrative material from my work with women and from my work with myself. In my analysis, I am grateful to my friend Dr. Theodora Waring, a Quaker minister, retired chaplain at the New England Baptist Hospital, who, in a workshop, talked about her religious transformation as a process of preparation, initiation, responsiveness, affirmation, and consequences. Since theological views are often at the core of one’s sense of self and the universe, there are, I think, striking parallels between the process of our religious change and our change in identity. In both cases, we are influenced to alter in significant ways our sense of being and our sense of connectedness. Both involve internal and external interactions and our willingness to respond. Both may be confirmed or undermined by our networks. Both have serious consequences for our futures.

Change starts with stage one, loss or rejection of the old identity. This can be self-initiated, as with the woman who seeks a divorce or goes back to school in later life. However, it may be forced on a person who is widowed, involuntarily divorced, or retired. It may be crisis-produced, or a gradual takeover of the D factor mentioned earlier. Either way, the person who is a digger-out, rather than a digger-in, must make a new life. A new life means change in self as well as change in one’s situation.

In my case, at nearly fifty years of age, I rejected my role as an unhappy wife, leaving my husband and home of nearly thirty years to move from the suburbs to the city and to a much less affluent life. I am now self-defined and other-defined as a single rather than half of a couple. My sense of place was shattered by leaving my old community. Place is important to identity, which is why geographic moves should be considered carefully. The area to which I moved was a transient, largely student one where it was almost impossible for me, a midlifer, to be neighbored or to neighbor. I would not have a sense of place again until I bought a house in a stable neighborhood several years later.

You will recall that the second part of the process I listed was mourning the old identity. I did that. In an apartment house overlooking Dumpsters and with no green space, I missed my gardener and homemaker roles. Even though my marriage had been unhappy for many years, I missed having someone to cook for and refused to cook for myself, subsisting on fast food, cottage cheese, and that son of fare. I wrote a poem about this that appears in my poetic drama, Button, Button, Who Has the Button? I put the poem into the mouth of Mary, a fifty-year-old divorcee in the play.

Leaving the suburb and wifehood

for a cheaper city apartment,

I moved my plants in first

so something would greet me.

The first morning I