BECOMING INVISIBLE... and loving it

❛Here, your wrinkles look like a spider web, Gran,’ my eight-year-old granddaughter offers one day.

We’re sitting on the garden swing together, and she’s closely examining my 59-year-old face. She traces the spider web under my one eye with a forefinger, then taps the same small finger against my wattle – that bit of loose skin under my chin that appeared apparently overnight about five years ago – and giggles as it jiggles.

There was a time when this would have freaked me out completely. In asociety that assigns little if any value to the elderly, and even less to women so much as approaching that demographic, we’re constantly made to be acutely aware of our physical signs of ageing. And when we’re no longer considered by men to be ‘pretty’ or ‘sexy’ or even (ugh) ‘MILFs’, we lose all value. Effectively, we become invisible.

There’s actually a social phenomenon called ‘invisible woman syndrome’,, points out, ‘If [a woman starts] to no longer be attractive, which is what some people consider if a woman ages, then she becomes less relevant. For some women it’s not a problem, and for others it’s quite difficult, particularly if they’ve always been someone who’s… felt they were noticed.’