As I progress through middle age, I’m going through the emotional adjustments everyone does. In my case, it plays out in my writing experience (Aaah, too little too late, no one your age can be a success at writing, the writers you know have been doing it for 25 years, etc.) and several other arenas. Some feelings are sharpened and complicated by my years of illness and addiction, such as when I envy others my age who never became disabled and therefore have more financial security. And some feelings are just garden-variety internalized ageism.
Case in point: my hair. I’m getting it cut short today. I’ve had it long for years, but the already fine strands have become thinner and finer with middle age. It won’t stay in a scrunchy or barrette; individual strands are always escaping and tickling my nose. I can’t wait to get rid of it and have a neater, low maintenance look. So what’s the problem? Nothing, really, just old stuff.
Somewhere–don’t know where–I got a message that long hair is a. more youthful and b. more feminine. What’s up with that? And I never think that about my female friends with short hair, only about myself. There’s a tiny part of my brain that feels as if getting my hair cut off is a kind of desexualization. Maybe it’s remembering a certain drastic haircut I gave myself in my freshman year of college, when I hacked off my long hair while upset after a housemate told me I looked like a tramp. Hmmm.
I din’t have any answers about this; it’s just interesting to examine attitudes I didn’t realize were lurking in there. It’s a good reminder that not everything I go through is about mental illness, or addiction, or even the ups and downs of being creative…I still get to participate in all the general human stuff, including growing old. And that, considering the alternative I came so close to, is a privilege.
Lori Lynne Armstrong 