A not-so-funny thing is about to happen to me. In a less than two short years, I'll turn fifty.
I'm only 48 (or am I 49? the closer I get to half a century the numbers are starting to blur) but I'm already staring at my bathroom mirror, watching my neck begin its inevitable rebellion against gravity. And losing sleep over it. This, despite the small fortune I've invested in Botox to keep the lines at bay. Yes, I'm a feminist who gets Botox. Sue me. Or better yet, join me for my next appointment. The waiting room is full of women just like us, reading Gloria Steinem while waiting for their foreheads to be frozen.
The irony? My mother is 78 and an absolute stunner. She looks 60 and acts like she's 50. A former ballerina, all grace and delicate lines. A walking, talking advertisement for aging gracefully, or perhaps defying it entirely. I watch her command rooms, turn heads, and generally refuse to cooperate with society's expectation that she fade into the background.
I'm a walking contradiction in so many ways. High T (testosterone) energy in a pin-up girl body. The kind of woman who wears knee-high boots and push-up bras but could also kick your ass in basketball while chugging a beer. I love daredevil adventures and girly cocktails in equal measure. I wear makeup and throw elbows. I'm the alternative bro trapped in a Sophia Loren body, and most people don't quite know what to do with me.
And now I'm approaching 50, wondering: what happens when you've never quite fit the mold, and then the mold itself is taken away?
For someone raised by a brilliant, no-nonsense woman who practically hissed at anyone who dared compliment her daughter's appearance ("Tell her she's smart, for God's sake!"), I found myself in unfamiliar territory. I was obsessing over wrinkles. Me. A card-carrying feminist. The betrayal I felt toward my carefully constructed principles was almost as deep as the lines that could be forming between my eyebrows. Thank you, Botox.
I went into a funk. A deep, unattractive, self-pitying funk. (Another thing that's not improved by age: wallowing. It was cute at 25. At 50, it's just sad.)
Becoming Transparent: The Science of Female Evaporation
Here's something they don't tell you in those chirpy "Embrace Your Age!" magazine articles written by 35-year-olds: there's an actual phenomenon called Invisible Woman Syndrome. It's not just in your head. Well, it is in your head, but it's also a documented social reality that makes aging particularly delightful for those of us with two X chromosomes.
A study of 2,000 women revealed that by age 51, many believed they had become completely invisible to men. Only 15% felt confident in any area of their lives. I'd find that shocking if I hadn't recently stood at a bar for 20 minutes while the bartender served literally every person with a penis first. And I'm only 47, supposedly still in my "visible" years, with the advantage of looking younger than my age.
The invisibility isn't just anecdotal. It's mathematical. Most data on women, including health metrics, employment statistics, and sexual abuse studies, stops at age 49. Forty-nine. Just two years away for me. The explanation? These frameworks focus on "women of reproductive age." Because apparently, once our ovaries close up shop, we cease to exist as measurable entities.
Thanks, science. Super helpful for my impending statistical extinction.
My mother, at 77, seems to have missed this memo entirely. She refuses to become invisible. She's like some sort of aging superhero who deflects the invisibility rays with her perfectly manicured hands. When she walks into a room, people notice. The bartender sees her. She exists, beautifully, decades past her expiration date.
And yet.
Recently, my mother and I stood side by side talking to a man (I can't recall which establishment, but it wasn't food-related). As we chatted, I became increasingly aware that his eyes never left mine. Not once. It was that intense, that obvious. My mother, this force of nature who turns heads at 77, might as well have been a potted plant. After he left, we looked at each other knowingly. "Did you notice..." I began. She just nodded.
The hierarchy of visibility is real. Even my gorgeous, age-defying mother becomes a ghost when standing next to her younger daughter. The invisible woman syndrome isn't an on/off switch at 50. It's a gradual dimming that accelerates in the presence of youth. It's relative, contextual, and brutally hierarchical.
The Intersection of No One Gives a Damn
At this magical crossroads of middle age, sexism and ageism are like twins separated at birth who found each other on Facebook and decided to team up to ruin your life.
I watched the Emmy awards last month, doing what I invariably do: comparing myself to actresses my age. You know, just Nicole Kidman and Cindy Crawford. Totally fair comparison. Me: a normal human woman. Them: genetically blessed beings who have teams of people whose entire careers revolve around making them look like they're 35 forever.
Then I remembered Iyanla Vanzant's quote: "Comparison is an act of violence against the self." As someone who considers herself an anti-violence advocate, the irony wasn't lost on me. Here I was, committing psychological assault on myself over crow's feet.
Of course, I come by this honestly. My grandmother, a formidable woman who could make you feel both adored and inadequate in the same breath, was obsessed with appearances. She raised my mother with the unshakable belief that a woman's worth was directly correlated to her looks. My mother, despite her feminist ideals, couldn't completely shake this programming. And so, like a cursed family heirloom, these beliefs trickled down to me.
I can still hear my grandmother's voice critiquing every aspect of my appearance. "Stand up straight!" "Suck in your stomach!" "No man wants a woman with saddle bags!" (Spoiler alert: plenty of men want women with saddle bags, Grandma. They just don't talk about it at your bridge club.)
The contradictions I embody, feminist with body issues, makeup enthusiast who can dominate a basketball court, pin-up aesthetic with beer-chugging skills, aren't accidents. They're the inevitable result of growing up caught between waves of feminism, between generations of women with different ideas about what makes a woman valuable, between cultural ideals that never quite aligned with my reality.
As my 50th birthday looms, I wonder: will invisibility be a relief from these contradictions? Or just another impossible standard to fail?
The Male Gaze: Still Gazing, Just Not at Women "Of a Certain Age"
The men my husband and I encounter are a fascinating study in redirected conversation. I'll be standing right there, you know, existing as a whole human person with thoughts and words coming out of my mouth, when some man will turn to my husband and say something like, "You've wrangled yourself a lightning bolt there!" or "What a wild, gorgeous animal you've got. Must have your hands full!"
These strangers, men I've never met before, congratulate my husband on "locking it down" as if I were a prize heifer at the county fair or a particularly volatile stock option he had the foresight to invest in. And the worst part? For a moment, a horrifying, traitorous moment, these comments make me feel good. Seen. Valuable.
And then the fury sets in. Why does this random dude's validation suddenly matter? Why does it register as a compliment that I'm being discussed like an exotic pet my husband has successfully domesticated? I've spent decades building a self-worth based on my accomplishments, my intellect, my character, and yet, there it is: that little glow when I'm reduced to a "lightning bolt" that someone "wrangled."
The compliments are always tinged with a bit of jealousy and delivered with a conspiratorial male-to-male nod, as if my husband and this stranger are members of some secret club: Men Who Somehow Captured Wild Women. I'm simultaneously flattered by being considered "wild" and insulted by being considered "captured." It's exhausting.
And when I considered stopping coloring my gray hair? Besides the anticipated gasps of horror from the women at the salon (you'd think I'd announced I was going to start wearing my skin inside out), I can already hear the most common response: "What does your husband think about that?"
I assure you, no one has ever asked me what I thought about my husband going bald. Not once. Not ever.
I'm bracing myself for the full invisibility cloak that apparently drops at 50. Will I suddenly become transparent overnight? Will people start walking through me like I'm a ghost? Will men stop congratulating my husband on his exotic pet? Based on what I'm seeing in my 40s, I fear the answer is yes. And I'm not sure whether to dread it or look forward to it.
The Corporate Vanishing Act
Remember that show "Younger" where the 40-something divorcée has to pretend she's 28 to get a job? I laughed until I realized it wasn't a comedy. It was a documentary.
The same thing happened to me. Post-divorce, re-entering the workforce, I was simultaneously over-qualified, under-qualified, and suspiciously burdened with "gap years" on my resume. (Yes, I have kids. Shocking, I know.)
Eventually, I landed a job where I did the work of five people for $70,000, with a fancy VP title and mysterious "equity" that was perpetually just around the corner. For five years. Without a raise. Because nothing says "we value your experience and wisdom" quite like exploitation dressed up as opportunity.
Preparing for Disappearance
So what's a woman approaching 50 to do? The advice from people who write articles like this one is predictable. Control your self-talk. Abandon vanity. Be your authentic self. Choose visibility.
The advice isn't wrong, exactly, but it's incomplete. Stopping the negative self-talk is a useful intervention except for the part where it requires you to stop the negative self-talk, which I, like many of us, find slightly difficult given that the negative self-talk has been my preferred form of decision-making for several decades. Abandoning vanity is also a wonderful goal, except that I schedule Botox appointments with the same dedication others reserve for dental cleanings, and my grandmother's voice still echoes in my head: "A lady always looks her best." Though I doubt Grandma would consider my basketball shorts and sports bra "looking my best," even with my wrinkle-free forehead.
Being authentic is the trickiest one for me. Am I more authentic in basketball shorts or knee-high boots? Chugging a beer or sipping a cosmopolitan? Arm-wrestling or applying lipstick? The answer, of course, is all of the above. I'm the human equivalent of a playlist that jumps from Metallica to Madonna without warning. How do you authentically age when you've never authentically fit any mold to begin with?
Choosing visibility is the one I'm actually working on. Some days I nail it. Other days I hide under a baseball cap and pray no one notices me in the grocery store. The days I wear my push-up bra and shoot hoops at the park? Those are the best days. When I remember that defying categories is its own kind of visibility.
The Visibility Hall of Fame (That I Hope to Join Someday)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on the Supreme Court until she was 87. Hillary Clinton ran for president at 68. Ita Buttrose became Chair of the ABC at 77, the same age as my mother, who fights to maintain her visibility in a world determined to erase her.
And me? I'm only 47. I look younger. I certainly act younger. By all accounts, I should feel secure. Yet I'm already panicking about my impending invisibility. And the memory of that man's eyes never leaving mine while my mother stood ignored beside me is a sharp reminder: in this game, we're all just one younger woman away from total transparency.
But maybe, just maybe, becoming invisible might actually be our superpower. Think about it. What could be more dangerous than women who have nothing to lose, who aren't worried about being pretty or pleasing, who have decades of experience and zero patience for bullshit?
Maybe invisibility isn't the curse we think it is. Maybe it's our chance to move through the world unburdened by others' expectations and judgments. Maybe, just maybe, it's freedom.
Though I like still being seen. A woman still needs her tequila, especially when contemplating her imminent social disappearance.
So here I stand at 47, looking 35, acting 28, on the precipice of 50, with a 77-year-old mother who refuses to fade away even as the world tries its hardest to un-see her. Will I truly vanish completely? Or will I, like her, keep fighting for the right to be noticed?
I'll report back when I find out. If you can still see me, that is.
