Better a Crone than a Red Hat!
by Dawn McDuffie
wanted me to come to his poetry reading, and he wasn’t accepting the
oldness excuse. Lucky for me, writers like symphony conductors are
treasured as they get older. But everywhere I look, with a few
marvelous exceptions, I see the expectation that a woman becomes less
powerful with every additional year. I haven’t had to fight off young
citizens who want to walk me across the street yet, but I have had an
airport employee look around my modest suitcase and carryon for my
friends. It didn’t seem possible to this much younger person that I was
traveling alone, but I was. I usually do, and why not? This is why I
get annoyed with the Red Hats even though they just want to eat their
salads in peace and save room for dessert. They seem to invite the very
categorization that drives me nuts.
It isn’t the color combination that bothers me. It’s the idea of
wearing similar outfits--dressing to fit in with one’s friends.
Uniforms always make a statement:
“We are the Red Hat Society--the ladies brave enough to go out to a
restaurant all dressed in purple and red;”
“We are the the high school pep club;”
“We wear bell bottoms and deplore political oppression;”
(or in the case of my own chosen uniform--the L L Bean look) “I care
just enough to look decent in my clothes, but I don’t care enough to
shop in a real store.”
I have nothing against dressing up. My own Grandma Fern believed in
being outrageous, and she did it all by herself. It started when she
had been retired from the A.C. spark plug factory for about five years
and had time to sew. Inspired by a six-yard piece of lavender brocade
on sale, she whipped up a floor length gown and wore it to church
complete with the make-up she always used when she left the house:
powder, lipstick, and rouge. This was a good deal more colorful than
what her fellow Lutherans were accustomed to seeing, and she didn’t
care. The following month she made a similar dress in emerald green and
wore that one to church, too. I salute any woman’s means of self-
expression. I’m just uncomfortable with a template that says here is
the way to show you’re proud of your age and your self.
I show that I’m old and proud by refusing to color my white hair. I
stopped the whole coloring routine in 1990--fifteen years ago. My gray
hair, still somewhat blond from the last gasp of “light natural ash
brown” bleached to white in one summer, but I had just spent two weeks
in central California. Perhaps the sun speeded the process along. I was
so young that one of my students wanted to know if I colored my hair to
get it to that shade of white. “Oh yes,” I lied. “It takes a lot of
work to get this color, because every bit of the original shade must be
stripped out first.”
I don’t wear make-up, I carry it. It’s good quality, too, lipstick from
Spear purchased at their Times Square location. How cool is that? And
if I’m ever stuck in a color emergency, I’ve got the product to touch
myself up to a becoming pink instead of the pigmentally-challenged
white I live with. I feel the lack of pigment more than most women,
because my husband is Black, my daughters are biracial, and my
grandchildren range from ivory to caramel. Their skin glows with color
and health, even in January, while I wear must wear sunscreen to
venture outdoors.
I think my unwillingness to wear makeup started when my husband and I
adopted Sarah. Every day before I left for work I took a walk with a
friend, showered, ate breakfast and dressed. Then I had just enough
time remaining for either a potty stop or makeup. Guess what--I chose
the potty every single time. As I got used to the lack of fine grit or
creamy grease on my lips and cheeks, I liked the clean feeling. And eye
makeup had been ruled out long ago, because I’m wildly allergic to
every form of it.
I added justification to comfort. Men manage to make their way through
life without tinting themselves pink, and little children are
considered charming. They don’t touch themselves up.
The truth is, I bought into the natural look because I’m a slacker
(Don’t wear make-up and no one will have high expectations of you,) and
because behind the slacker attitude, I really don’t think I look that
bad.
But why do I carry the make-up I don’t wear? For the same reason I buy
pretty undies that I don’t wear. I like to know that I have the option
any day to wear whatever I please and color myself any shade I choose.
So call me eccentric. Believe me, I’ve been called worse!
Here’s the real point. Being an individual demands a life full of
individual choices and individual decisions. I have friends who wear
nothing but black and friends who love dangling earrings. My mother, a
rural conservative who voted for he who shall not be named, hasn’t worn
a bra since 1970. We take what we want, as the proverb goes, and we pay
for it.
Now that I’m sixty, here’s an entire club of thousands (maybe millions)
of women who want to be all adorable and identical and make old age
cute and harmless. Growing older isn’t harmless. It leads to death. And
before death, limitations crop up. Already my hands stiffen up when I
need them to bend and I knock over the object I wanted to pick up. I
have a brown belt in Aikido, but I can’t break into a chip bag without
a pair of scissors.
I could buy a red hat (now available in plenty of pricey catalogs) but
I doubt if I could eat the rich lunch considered suitable for ladies. I
can’t tolerate fruit salad and seven layer cake is five layers too
many. I remember a lithe young dancer at the women’s coffee house
dancing to a rather repetitive chant that celebrated the era of
prehistory when the females of an entire social unit would have their
periods at the same time. Mass PMS didn’t sound like that great an
idea, but besides the obvious problem--your friends, sisters, and grown
daughters all getting nervous when the moon got full, it seemed to cut
out all the post menopausal women.” So I asked about that and got told,
“Crones are cool.”
Crones! I guess that’s the right word, and if so, I am a crone, but I
refuse to be a crone in a red hat, just as I refuse to sit around
drinking “senior coffee.” Does old equal aimless? I’ve never hung
around fast food outlets or shopping malls, and I don’t plan to start
doing so just to say I’ve saved a quarter or whatever the going
discount for oldness might be. If this country wants to do something to
give senior citizens some respect, give us decent health care and a
raise. Or here’s a thought. Women who want to wear the true badge of
old age that is shameless and wild, forget the red hats and purple
dresses and go for the genuine article--plaid pants and a striped top.
Lots of us have been waiting for the golden moment when we no longer
have to care about the right uniform. When that happens we can give
ourselves up to a wildness that could include infinite possibilities.
Perhaps we might found a truly just society or popularize a sexual
aesthetic that would have younger people gasping with a desperate
longing to be old and happy sooner rather than later.
Here’s the real point. Being an individual demands a life full of
individual choices and individual decisions. I have friends who wear
nothing but black and friends who love dangling earrings. My mother, a
rural conservative who voted for he who shall not be named, hasn’t worn
a bra since 1970. We take what we want, as the proverb goes, and we pay
for it.
Now that I’m sixty, here’s an entire club of thousands (maybe millions)
of women who want to be all adorable and identical and make old age
cute and harmless. Growing older isn’t harmless. It leads to death. And
before death, limitations crop up. Already my hands stiffen up when I
need them to bend and I knock over the object I wanted to pick up. I
have a brown belt in Aikido, but I can’t break into a chip bag without
a pair of scissors.
I could buy a red hat (now available in plenty of pricey catalogs) but
I doubt if I could eat the rich lunch considered suitable for ladies. I
can’t tolerate fruit salad and seven layer cake is five layers too
many. I remember a lithe young dancer at the women’s coffee house
dancing to a rather repetitive chant that celebrated the era of
prehistory when the females of an entire social unit would have their
periods at the same time. Mass PMS didn’t sound like that great an
idea, but besides the obvious problem--your friends, sisters, and grown
daughters all getting nervous when the moon got full, it seemed to cut
out all the post menopausal women.” So I asked about that and got told,
“Crones are cool.”
Crones! I guess that’s the right word, and if so, I am a crone, but I
refuse to be a crone in a red hat, just as I refuse to sit around
drinking “senior coffee.” Does old equal aimless? I’ve never hung
around fast food outlets or shopping malls, and I don’t plan to start
doing so just to say I’ve saved a quarter or whatever the going
discount for oldness might be. If this country wants to do something to
give senior citizens some respect, give us decent health care and a
raise. Or here’s a thought. Women who want to wear the true badge of
old age that is shameless and wild, forget the red hats and purple
dresses and go for the genuine article--plaid pants and a striped top.
Lots of us have been waiting for the golden moment when we no longer
have to care about the right uniform. When that happens we can give
ourselves up to a wildness that could include infinite possibilities.
Perhaps we might found a truly just society or popularize a sexual
aesthetic that would have younger people gasping with a desperate
longing to be old and happy sooner rather than later.
Dawn McDuffie
contact Dawn at dawnmcduffie@hotmail.com
bravenet.com