Celebrate You!
Honestly, when all the physical changes of middle age first appeared, sometimes I just wanted to disappear. Unfortunately, I got my wish! The midlife years usher in another phenomenon for women: the disappearance factor, famously noted in Gail Sheehy’s classic book, “New Passages.” Women find that one day, men don't see them anymore.
As female pheromones fade, women fade from testosterone’s radar. On a subliminal level, the male person “detects,” if you will, the presence of pheromones and responds accordingly. When pheromones are absent, so is the male response to the presence of a woman. It’s as if we are suddenly camouflaged to blend into our surroundings. We become chameleons. Men just stop seeing us! Now I know there are some phenomenal middle-aged females out there who still stop traffic without the benefit of a crossing guard sign. But most of us begin to experience the alarming lack of male reaction some time in our 40s to 50s. Men who once rushed over to chat us up, to offer assistance behind counters and at the automotive repair shop, all seem to look through and past us.
I was once pursued to the grocery store parking lot by a check-out girl, who begged for my phone number on behalf of one of her shy male associates who moved mountains to be at the cash register when I checked out but couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to me. In my new invisible state, I noticed that male checkers no longer even twinkled at me, and, in fact, never made eye contact even when handing me the receipt. I further found that when men were forced to "see" me, it annoyed them. I would ask a male sales associate where an item was, and his eyes would focus on me only reluctantly and his reply would be without a smile. Whereas there used to be a tussle at the car repair shop over which mechanic would get to walk up and greet me, now they stonewalled until one resignedly removed his gloves, plodded up to me as if he was walking the last mile on death row and asked in a resigned monotone, "Can I help you?" On more than one occasion of invisibility, I've had the urge to rip open my blouse and bellow, "HELLO!" and see if THAT gets a reaction. But I fear it would only get a restraining order.
Comedian Tina Fey took observations of the annoyance reaction a step further. She noted that in casting meetings of sitcoms, the men in the room were quite frank and would veto casting an actress (or fire her if she had been on the show for a while) if they "didn't want to (have sex with) her." The bracketed words replace a very bad verb. Their decision had nothing to do with the actress’s talent. "Yeah, she's good but I don't want to (have sex with) her." Fey said that if a “non-doable” woman even talks to a man, his disinterested, bored, annoyed reaction clearly states his bafflement. "Why are this woman’s lips still moving? Why is she still talking to me?" Fey concluded that men subconsciously see no point in interacting with a woman they don't want to have sex with. Of course, she dwells in the hard world of entertainment where even the greatest actresses experience a drop in project offers after their 40th birthday.
But still — it does seem that once the pheromones cease to emanate seductively from our skin and hair, men are hardwired to no longer see the point in talking to us, much less listening to us, or stopping for us if our car is in flames by the roadside, or resuscitating us if we keel over in front of them.
However, all the women I know who have progressed from girl to goddess celebrate their femininity every day of their lives. They live with grace, glamour and freedom. Youth is not ageless. Beauty is. And so is love.
