ABSTRACT
Feminist excursions into the concept of femininity posit the ageing female body as lack, so that the older woman, unrepresented in mainstream culture, might be seen as liberated from the prison-house of normative femininity. From another perspective, she might simply be rendered invisible – not purely to the desiring male gaze, but also to the eye of the feminist critic. Indeed one can argue that feminism has itself remained orientated around youth, despite the fact that some of its most notable exponents have written at length about ageing (De Beauvoir 1972; Greer 1991; Friedan 1993). Feminist scholarship has thoroughly analysed our era’s obsession with the nubile youthful female body and the tendency to portray women only in relation to men; it has explored less frequently aspects of female experience across the ages. Ageing is too often associated with a diminishing of powers, or loss of material resources, friends, health, and there is scant analysis of the radical possibilities that invisibility brings to women over forty, who may be perfectly placed to challenge what femininity means. Those contemporary commentators who have concerned themselves with age note in particular the discrepancies between the images and descriptive terms available to men and women: ‘it is difficult to find masculine counterparts to terms such as crone, witch, and hag, each of which has the ability to call forth strong visual images of maliciousness and degeneracy’ (Stoddard 1983: 3). It is women in contemporary western culture who are socialised to acutely fear age and ‘among older people, women suffer most from both ageism and sexism’ (Paloetti 1998: 2). The popular cultural messages fed back to them confirm that women must remain at war with the visible effects of age, or fear the consequences. Film is just one medium that has traditionally favoured the youthful woman,
not least because men generally control the creative and financial processes in film. Numerous actors and commentators have, over the years, lamented the paucity of meaty film roles for older women. Regularly available parts offer few demands to those who have in the past enjoyed star billing; roles such as mother, grandmother, domestic servant, spinster, infirm person are narrative function more often than narrative fulcrum. There appears to be little engagement with representations of women who are beyond childbearing years, even less so beyond menopause. In All About Eve (1950) Margo Channing’s (Bette
Davis) fate as an ageing actress most evocatively summarises the tensions within a woman’s identity:
Funny business a woman’s career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder – so that you can move faster – you forget you’ll need them again when you go back to being a woman. That’s one career all females have in common whether we like it or not. Being a woman. Sooner or later we’ve got to work at it, no matter what other careers we’ve had or wanted. And in the last analysis nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner – or turn around in bed – and there he is. Without that, you’re not a woman. You’re something with a French provincial office – or a book full of clippings. But you’re not a woman. Slow curtain. The End.
