Sarah Lang confronts the increasing ‘invisibility’ that middle-aged women face. But is saying goodbye to pretty privilege and finding freedom from the male gaze, well, freeing?
When I was 16, I found out how to look what I considered to be pretty. I bought makeup, dyed my hair blonde, lost weight, wore skimpy clothes at parties, and suddenly got male attention. It was a bit of a rush, TBH. And it was self-reinforcing. If you’re rewarded for looking a certain way, you strive to look that way – or at least I did for a long time, and not always in a healthy way.
Now that I’m 44, I realise I was treated differently and better by men when I was younger, prettier and thinner. In public, men smiled at me more and were generally nicer to me. They would sometimes offer me their spot in a line, otherwise be helpful, or talk to me on flights. They would give me a look that wasn’t sexual, but approving. It was confirmation of the notion that prettier was better. It was the male gaze.
I remember meeting a friend of a friend who never spoke to me on two occasions that we met in group settings during the year or so that I was quite overweight. It was as if I was invisible. When I saw him years later at a wedding, he spoke to me, and said ‘you’re much prettier now, look at your yellow dress!’. “So I’ve earned the great privilege of you talking to me because I’m pretty enough now, but I wasn’t before?” I said. Well, I said that in my head. In real life, I just walked away without answering. Sometimes silence speaks the loudest.
What is ‘Pretty Privilege?’
Glamour magazine describes pretty privilege as “the term the internet has coined to describe the benefits associated with conforming to society’s beauty ideals”. The hashtag #PrettyPrivilege has racked up more than 300 million views on TikTok, with more than 45,000 posts, mostly made by young women, including one called ‘how to increase your pretty privilege’.
It’s not just a buzzword. A Time article called ‘Pretty People Really Do Have It Better’ says “the social advantages of pretty privilege are many: good-looking people come off as smart, capable, trustworthy, and generally morally virtuous… And for women, pretty privilege plays a much more outsized role because women remain broadly objectified by society; our looks are often the most prioritized asset we have to bargain with, and looking the part is always requisite to getting the part.”
The Invisibility of Middle Age
You’ve no doubt heard of another term: the invisibility of the middle-aged woman. In a TEDx Talk called ‘Women, Aging and Visibility’, Kate McKinnon says “there are so many myths and misconceptions about women aging in our Western culture. As we get older, we become invisible – generally starting at 40, though some feel it earlier, and it continues as we age. As a result, we can feel less valued and sometimes downright disregarded.”
In an Atlantic story called ‘The Invisibility of Older Women’, writer Akiko Busch says this “vanishing can occur more rapidly or be felt more acutely”.
“It is a cliché,” she writes, “to point out that ours is a culture in which men routinely objectify women, but according to Alison Carper, a psychologist who practices in New York, if a woman is complicit in this practice – that is, in viewing herself as an object – she cannot help but be acutely aware when that object loses its desirability.”
Gosh, this is tricky. Because as women, how can we avoid being ‘complicit’ when society tells us we should look pretty and rewards us for it? Also, if we feel uncomfortable about our changing looks, but know that logically we shouldn’t feel this way, isn’t that just another way to blame ourselves?
I think if we zoom out and look at wider social forces, that might stop us blaming ourselves? Professor Sue Westwood recently published an academic article, based on her findings in a study, called “‘It’s the not being seen that is most tiresome’: older women, invisibility and social (in)justice”.
She writes that “older women experience intersectional discrimination at the nexus of ageism and sexism. Older women often face the dilemma of attempting to mask the signs of aging or aging ‘authentically’ but encountering heightened stigma, prejudice, and discrimination. Many older women speak of experiencing a loss of visibility as they age.”
I interviewed Sarah Jane Barnett two years ago when she released her memoir Notes on Womanhood. She wrote that the ageing process had made her feel invisible, but she was pushing back against that, including by no longer getting beauty treatments. “I still occasionally look in the mirror and think, ‘oh, maybe I should go get some skin needling or a laser peel’, then I catch myself and think, ‘no, that doesn’t align with my values’.”
My Own Journey Towards Middle Age
Even though you know it’s coming, becoming ‘invisible’ as a middle-aged woman can be a hard transition to make. I’ve gained some weight, I have a bit of a tummy. My cheeks don’t have the same elasticity. My eye wrinkles (I hate the term crows’ feet) have become more pronounced.
But so what? Recently I realised that I just don’t CARE about being ‘invisible’ – or that I don’t care anywhere near as much I thought I would. No, I’m not delighted about physical changes, but I’m more okay with them – and that’s a major shift for me. There’s a kind of a freedom in feeling removed from the male gaze. There’s a kind of a freedom in not feeling I should put on make-up every day. But also, I’m nowhere near ready to let my (as yet few) grey hairs show, and that’s totally okay.
For her blog site Hey Middle Age, Mimi Ison has written a story called ‘Invisibility in Midlife: Why I’m Comfortable Being Invisible and Unseen in Middle Age’. She writes that, “I’m comfortable with midlife invisibility because the unattainable comparisons that shower and drench women since childhood were ALL unattainable for me, so after years of trying, I said screw it and moved on.” I get that. Even when I felt pretty, I never felt quite pretty enough.
Now, when I catch myself feeling bad about my wrinkles or my thigh dimples, I remind myself that these say nothing about my actual worth. My worth is in traits that have nothing to do with my changing looks. The people who are worth knowing – they see me.
