Tell me what it’s like to be 50

Lately, I’ve been reading articles about how to be a middle aged woman (assuming I live to 100). Technically, I fall at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation. You know… the extremely large group of people who are retired or getting ready to?! It seems that being a part of a huge demographic has it perks. Endless AARP invitations (with a free travel bag!), and adult children who are doing “rock, paper, scissors” to see who loses wins the “taking care of Mom lottery” and a whole lot of people aging right along side of you.

Today, I came across an article titled “Women Over 50 are Invisible? I Must Have Missed The Memo”. 

Oh… author Erica Jagger, you had me at:

Here’s an if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest question: if society didn’t tell older women they were invisible, would older women still feel invisible?

That is a well written article that my 50 year old brain can grasp. I decided to peek at Jagger’s website. Empowering? Absolutely. But I really wasn’t a Cosmo kind of girl at 20, I don’t think that would change at 50. Erica Jagger’s website is beautiful, and is peppered with her own stories as well as those of others that really can be uplifting. However, I’m throwing the Prude card because I find the website, in it’s entirety, to be a bit over-sexualized. While sex is important, I can’t make the connection that female visibility is intertwined solely with one’s sexual identity.

As for my opinion about my perception of invisibility? This is why I call bullshit on invisibility:

My Grandma Marie was the most stunning and vivacious woman that God ever created, Woman with a capital “W”. She had both glamour and mischief in her beautiful twinkling eyes. She and my handsome Grandfather, Mac,  looked like movie stars as they walked together hand in hand. He would never call her invisible, he beamed in her presence. In her 70’s she commanded every room she’d walk in. Her hunger for life required your attention. I remember her charming my brother’s entire cosmetology with a wink and a blown kiss. To this day, my cousins and I try and emulate her. My cousins each sparkle with little radiant pieces of Marie and Mac’s gene pool.  They are gone now, but the impression they made will be around for a long time. Indelible, not invisible.