You're Too Old for "Old Lady Stuff." In Fact, F*ck Your "Old Lady Stuff"
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Why old ladies can still be hot girls and other stuff that matters
When do you know you’re old?
When you decide you are.
When your attitude dictates how you see yourself in the mirror, when your posture reflects the weight of the world you carry quite unnecessarily, when you have decided that the very first signs of being past (20, 30, 40, whatever) means that it’s all over.
You’re done.
That you? Did you decide at thirty that life was already over, that youth had said Buh-BYE and you might as well give up?
Try reading Breaking the Age Code by Becca Levy. Or don’t. Misery loves company, but joy follows the work.
There’s also research that says that genetics play a far larger part in how long we live. If that’s the case, imagine you come from long-lived stock, as I do. You decide that life is OVER at thirty. Now you have perhaps seventy more years to moan, groan, bitch, complain and wallow in misery about how old you are.
Thereby forfeiting decades of potentially vibrant life to the misery of old age, all because of gerascophobia. Or just stupidity. Sometimes I’m not sure.
Sounds like fun, right?
I turned 73 this year. This is also the year that I had my final of some fourteen major surgeries on shoulders, hip, hands, feet, and was finally, FINALLY released back into the world free to move again.
Those surgeries came as a result of throwing myself wholesale into serious adventure sports all over the world at the ancient, broken-down, absolutely GERIATRIC age of sixty.
Since 2018, I’ve had my fair share of repairs.
Talk about a new lease on life. Last night my orthotics guy fitted me up for my brand new (overpriced) Hokas. I am bloody well good to go.
I do not have time to feel old.
Speaking of going. I have loaded up my house, am finishing up my finances, wills, power of attorney documents and dog moving details, and I am on the road to parts unknown in barely over two weeks.
New lease on life, at 73.
Fuck your old lady stuff.
Living a slower life isn’t old lady. It’s just life. It’s as rich and fine and varied and happy as any other life at any age. Calling a slower, quieter, more thoughtful life “old lady” is insulting to anyone and everyone who chooses to slow down and grow something. That’s what irritates me.
Back in January I started a new project: vision boards. I got a fair bit along with them, but preparation for my brand-new shiny life overtook the project. So I loaded my unfinished boards into an art box and have been clipping all the magazines for phrases and photos for later pasting.
Vision boards work. Time after time I find that what I paste on a vision board has a way of coming about.
Be careful what you ask for, because when the gods want to punish you, they fulfill your dreams.
Among the magazines I chose was Bella Grace. I largely loved the photos and was mostly charmed by the writing. But all the women are YOUNG. Not a single girl in those covers was within decades of my age.
Every single one was in her twenties or thirties. At the outside.
So when I came to one quote, it slapped me hard. In fact, this quote was the inspiration for this article:
Hot girl stuff sounds exhausting. I want old lady stuff. Rising early, tending to my garden, baking from scratch, watching the sunset from the porch with iced tea, a good country song, farmers markets, minding my business, good books, cute aprons and going to bed early. - Dana McGowan
Old lady stuff?
This is just LIFE. Her unfortunate and deeply insulting ageist characterization of a sweet slow life as old lady stuff pretty much underscored the magazine’s unspoken message. Thirties are the end of it, beyond that, it’s all old lady stuff.
Fuck your old lady stuff.
Every thing McGowan listed is just life. A more thoughtful life. Living more slowly isn’t about being old. It’s about being more alive in the moment, more thoughtful, noticing.
Aging isn’t slowing down. Assuming this is precisely why your attitude dictates the quality of your aging process. You can slow down and be more in life at any age.
You can also speed up and be more in life at any age.
For me, when I turned sixty, I was still working ninety-hour weeks and consulting for the Fortune 100. I had written two prize-winning books at 58 and 59, respectively.
I turned that energy into a career in adventure travel.
That’s also old lady stuff.
Life is what you make of it. Slow, fast, mixed, moderate, extreme. There are chapters, moments, days, weeks, years, they vary like a crazy quilt.
To assign “old lady" to watching a sunset from the porch with an iced tea is, well,
Fuck your old lady stuff, honey.
We’d be wise to learn to do that from adolescence.
How you do you is up to you. What I would hope is that whatever you do, however you do it, don’t decide that certain ways of being are “old lady” or “old man” just because they are a slower, more thoughtful way of being.
That’s ripe ageism.
Such moments, when I see a much younger person’s quote which effectively seeks to put anyone past a certain age in a box, I’m reminded of why I wrote a book about the power of words. What we say to ourselves is immensely powerful.
We can age ourselves overnight into bitter, spiteful Gollums just by how we frame our sacred bodies, our right to be richly and vividly alive at any age.
That path serves only those who stand to profit from our horror about aging.
I don’t have time for that shit. Neither do you.
It doesn’t matter if how you do life is cute aprons and baking from scratch. It doesn’t matter if you do extreme races ( I see you, Warren Nelson). None of it matters.
What matters is that you live, in full vivid color, every moment of your life. That’s not about age. That’s about life.
Go live your life, on your terms, your way.
Fuck the old lady stuff.
Let’s play.
Thanks to all my readers and subscribers. Still packing, still working, still living out loud. Let’s all do that. Please consider:
I have been given a multitude of examples of how and when people get old. My father died of cancer at 52. That's horribly young. But his father lived to be 104. Damn. My mother died of cancer at 67. That's also young. But her mother lived to be almost 90. Both my parents smoked heavily all of my life; hence the cancer. They also drank quite a bit. Neither are best for your long life.
<Note to self: Don't smoke! Don't drink.... too much!>
My mother sort of gave up after my father died. She still had friends, still argued about politics and religion but she completely stopped moving. It didn't do her any good in the end.
<Note to self: Keep moving!>
Both my parents were always game to try something new. My mother picked up junked furniture and taught herself to refinish. Our house was full of reclaimed, refurbished, renewed antiques. They traveled and took us kids all across the country and to a lesser extent the world. My dad figured out how to camp. It was the only way they could afford to haul us four kids all over the place. We camped on our trips to Gettysburg and Boston to learn about the Revolutionary war, to Maine for lobsters on the beach, to Indiana for the apple cider festival, to Mobile to learn about the South, and to Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia to learn about Appalachia.
<Note to self: Keep trying new things!>
I am 77 so I am well past the ages my parents died but have decades left to reach the ages of my grand-parents when they died. I have certainly slowed down and my needs have changed for sleep, food choices and activity levels. My balance isn't what it once was nor is my stamina. But I still go to the gym regularly, ride my bike around the neighborhood, say hello to my neighbors, and lift weights on the back porch. I play with my grandkids. I'm very pleased with where I am and what I do. I have a new loom I'm getting ready to warp and kitchen towels that I'm working on getting woven off my big loom. I don't travel like I would like but I love being home with my husband and our dogs. Yes, life is slower but it is not without great joy and laughter. I think I'm good.
<Note to everyone: Keep going. Keep engaged. Don't think of yourself as old!
100% agree with this article.