Long ago, and before dating apps, there were personal ads. Through newspapers and magazines, those who were single (or not) or ready to settle down (allegedly) took out personal ads. So, let’s say I decided to go old school and take out a personal ad for friendship, here’s what mine would say:
Invisible Middle-Aged Woman—Married, White, Female, a 48-year-old woman seeks to be seen and heard.
When I was 44, three different women, colleagues of mine in their 50s, within three weeks of each other said, “Wait until you’re in your 50s, you become invisible.” I looked at each and every one of them and thought, Holy shit, maybe if you stopped wearing beige that would help. I lacked empathy, instead I breathed deeply into my vibrant and robust life. I had a strong and fun marriage to my best friend. I had a challenging son in kindergarten. I had healthy and empathetic daughters, one who was a junior in high school and my oldest who was off at college. Over the past two decades at UC San Diego, I’d moved from taking 24-hour dietary recalls to being the director of large community-based projects and brought in millions of dollars. Spurred on by these discussions with the older women, I bought red pumps, sometimes wore red lipstick, and took up surfing again. Age meant NOTHING to me. I went on with my life.
Yet, something nagged at me. Never one for sitting back and being content, I loved to challenge myself. This was a nice way of saying I craved chaos. Thus, I decided to go back to school to get my PhD. What was I thinking? It had been almost three decades since I got my master’s in nutrition. At 24-years-old, my oldest child was the same age I was when I got my advanced degree. Long story short, it had been decades since I’d sat in a classroom to learn. Yes, this middle-aged woman was ready to CONTINUE to kick some major ass. Little did I know, that it would kick my ass.
Let me count the ways I realized early on I was in over my head:
- At almost 49-years-old, I was the oldest student;
- I was one of three of the oldest women in my cohort (Funny, there might have been men my same age, but it didn’t register with me.);
- In my first leadership class, there not one woman leader was mentioned; and,
- I was asked for my student ID whenever I tried to purchase anything on campus.
Nothing had prepared me for this, including my decades long tenure at UC San Diego. Under the guidance of Dr. Philip Nader, the founder of the Center for Community Health, I’d been able to rise from a field evaluator to a principal investigator. I was responsible for bringing in lots of money and running public health programs.
Here was the problem—UC San Diego, like most academic institutions, is hierarchical and patriarchal. My perception of the hierarchy was as follows: administration (chancellor and cabinet), medical doctors with NIH grants, medical doctors, tenured professors (even PhDs) with NIH grants; bench scientists versus social scientists; and, the rest of us. However, since the Center for Community Health was off campus, we had freedom from the dogma, structure, and policies of the university. I’d been lulled into thinking the world was equitable and collaborative.
Thank goodness, I was the age I was.
Thank goodness, I had achieved much in my personal and professional life.
Thank goodness, I was secure.
Thank goodness, I wanted to disrupt the old and bring in the new for my children and next generations.
This sounds like a magical synergy of the left and right brain, a collaboration of calculation and kumbaya.
It wasn’t.
I will NOT belabor each and every class I took.
I will NOT explain how rough this academic journey was.
I will NOT recount the number of times I was silenced or shamed, or both.
Okay, let’s skip to the “ending.”
For my dissertation, I used the photovoice method. The focus is on sharing images and stories to see and hear each other, create empathy, and to generate community.
I’d become obsessed about the “plight of the middle-aged woman.” I chose this demographic BECAUSE I happened to be a middle-aged woman. I got some pushback from those around me in my department. Why don’t you concentrate on First Nations in Canada? You should study the human trafficking issue right here in San Diego. Aren’t you horrified by the poverty and hunger in Uganda? My answers in order:
- I would love to help to tell the stories of the First Nations’ people;
- I am appalled by the numbers of young women (mostly) who are forced into sex trafficking; and,
- Hell, yes, I’m horrified about Uganda (and every place where there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor, including the U.S.).
But, alas, I am a middle-aged woman from California who is concerned why we have high opioid abuse and suicide rates, why after our uterus and ovaries no longer produce life we are put out to pasture, and why we are given by society the following labels: crone, invisible, nag, ugly, and inoperable.
Five other women and myself took this journey into images and storytelling. We were a diverse group: a lesbian who had never been married and worked as a teacher; a mixed-race woman who had been married, had two children and now had a female partner and was a writer and professor; a devout Catholic married woman, who had been a stay-at-home mom with now two grown sons; an immigrant woman who crossed into the U.S. without paperwork and was now a citizen, married, with two children and was a director of a nonprofit; a Black woman who worked as an administrator for her church, married, with three children (one son died as a young man from a blood clot that traveled to his heart causing a heart attack); and me, a divorced, remarried woman with two daughters from a previous marriage and son from my second one and I’d worked in the public health field for over 30 years.
My passion was/is to change the narrative that others have given me and my fellow middle-aged sisters. Spoiler alert: this is the crux of Representation Rebellion.
The first question I asked of the group was what does society think about middle-aged women? Here are some of the women’s responses:
Feel into these. What are your thoughts or feelings about these images? Respond in comments.
The next question was what it is like to be in your own place and space. Here are the responses:
What are your thoughts and feelings when you look at the second set of photos? What do you think it’s like to be a middle-aged woman?
Bottom line: Representation Rebellion is about shining the light on how society, the status quo, tells our stories. We want to see your images and hear your stories so we might build a community of empathy. Through this transformation, we can create a new story, one of equity and diversity. Perhaps we seek the same personal ad: Insert demographic [Invisible Middle-Aged Woman—Married, White, Female, a 48-year-old woman] seeks to be seen and heard. ONWARD!