This is 61

Can we please reframe the narrative about older women at work?

A few years ago, back when I was still on Facebook, I saw a second-tier celebrity post a picture of herself with the caption “This is sixty.” She posted it on her sixtieth birthday. She was standing in side view, so you could see her flat stomach, thin, fit body, and perky breasts.

Apparently if you’re going to tout being sixty, you’d best look like a conventionally-attractive-as-considered-by-male-dominated-mass-media thirty-year-old.

I turned sixty-one this weekend. Sixty-one doesn’t feel that different than forty-one or fifty-one. I’m in good shape, active, still working, with all my wits about me. I write this newsletter, a podcast and I’m writing a book, while I still do executive coaching and consulting. And hang out with my grandkids.

To me, “this is sixty-one” is saying I’m still here. Still working, still writing, still thinking up new stuff, still in the world.

Which may be more aspirational and inspiring than having won at diet culture.

I don’t feel that different, but the world treats me very differently.

I really am invisible in public spaces. Which I find a relief, after decades of street harassment. Older men still notice me sometimes. As I walked into the gym last week a man in his late sixties who was standing outside the front door said something like “the ladies are going to work out and take over the world,” he said, moving his arm to mimic what he thought was a dainty bicep curl. I’ll take the Older Woman Cloak of Invisibility over that every day.

The corporate invisibility bothers me, but since I work for myself and my executive coaching clients select me to work with them, I don’t have to put up with it much more.

I wrote an article about how everything I read in the press about older women at work – with the exception of stories about Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of Twitter now X – is about how debilitating menopause is. Evidently, it makes us go crazy, need to nap during the day, and have hot flashes that drive us to distraction. And, from what these articles indicate, it never ends.

Imagine if every article you saw about Gen Z was about how puberty makes you crazy. Gen Z, those between the ages of 11 and 26, is a varied cohort, and one which brands want to connect with now to monetize future relationships. They aren’t just about what phase their body is in, because many of them are through puberty.

Women from 45-65 are a varied cohort as well, and we experience lots of aspects of life outside of menopause. Which, by the way, ends, usually around 55. You don’t ever hear about that in the articles, that menopause ends and is replaced by the joys of post-menopause and never having to worry about menstruation, tampons or birth control again.

But that story isn’t in demand. I know, I’ve sent it to 8 publications, some of which I’ve written for before, and no one wants it. Are those of us still writing, still thinking, still changing things for the better in our sixties just not socially relevant any longer?

Ads aren’t geared toward us, even though we spend lots of money. I get ads for products that will alleviate my “old lady smell” and for clothes that are “tailored for a mature figure,” or various cosmetics that hide wrinkles or erase them or make my neck skin dewy and smooth. In the past two weeks I’ve gotten ads to firm and improve my armpits, neck, feet, varicose veins, eyes, calves and hips.

Armpits? Really?

And don’t get me started on the ads about how to get rid of belly fat. It’s almost a stutter, I get them so often.

I was just talking with a young friend, who was interested in my article idea. She said that she still hears the same narratives about menopause and aging that I did when I was young, and it scares women in their twenties, as she is. It scared me too – you’re going to lose your mind, stink, not be able to concentrate and feel like you’re on fire for the rest of your life.

Why is the messaging I heard in the 1970s about getting older still almost exactly the same as what this woman is hearing in 2023?

If anyone has a connect at a publication that might give a shit about promulgating a different more positive narrative about older women, please get in touch. Stephanie@upperhand.biz.

Because this is what sixty-one and pissed off looks like.