Photographers look for the blue hour, the one that appears about ten minutes after the golden hour, so spectacular at sunset. The light is sufficient to define the shadow areas, because it is not yet dark, it is blue. The atmosphere perches both on the wire of mystery and clarity, a romantic touch, but without excess. Think silk or cashmere negligee.
I step into the twilight of life as one puts on a pearl gray cashmere dressing gown. It is at the same time soft, discreet, elegant and comfortable. And it is expensive; the price of experience.
I am the first of a long line of women not to live according to what society expects of a menopause downgraded by the narrative framework, faded by time. The first not to live behind a screen, to care about rumors. I even wrote the novel, that is to say if I thought about it a bit.
I slip into the blue hour, without filters, without needles, without surgery, too bad. I’ve seen this battle lost before, with no visible gain to the soul, it seems. I rather chose to dig where there is still to discover, something like an appeasement; serenity even seems possible. But time is my ally. I observe his slow work of sanding all the interior roughness. Why are we not already born old?
I had long-time mentors, inspiring women, freer than average, Loulou, Mimi, Suzanne, all in their eighties today, who passed on to me a bit of their panache and some advice for aging with less. possible corsets.
Today, I in turn mentor young female journalism students who are old enough to be my daughters. All they need to hear is, “Go! You are able. What have you got to lose? If it is, in five years, you will be cultivating vines in the Hérault, married to a French woman” (Hello Sophie!).
At their age, a handsome athletic Californian — Hi Glen ! — had proposed to me and wanted to buy a vineyard in Oregon to start a family there. I missed the opportunity to taste pinot noir at 9 a.m., to have kids Americans and celebrate Thanksgiving like everyone else.
The secret of happiness and the height of art is to live like everyone else, by being like no one
The letting go of the beautiful age
Like most women who have reached my twilight years, I wouldn’t go back to 20 for anything in the world. Not even for the physical, which I did not appreciate at its fair value. I’ve reached that semi-delicious stage where I can slip on a Georges Lévesque skirt over my cross-country ski kit just because my B tells me I look “like a mother from Saint-Lambert who is going to do “his” sport”. Oh yes? ! Watch me go…
I achieved a detachment that comes with the Libarte 55; nothing more to prove, everything to try again. And as Vivian Gornick relates so well in The woman apart : as they age, men are no longer a main dish; more condiments. I’m no longer hungry for the five courses, by the way. I could have dinner with spicy green olives from Adonis and my Gin-ette, the gin of our national Ginette, a successful marketing stunt. And a shirtless guy with his guitar, Valentine’s Day or not, makes harissa-relish-salsa all by himself. Mature eroticism is experienced in many ways. The writer Catherine Millet, who once made a splash by describing her Parisian orgies, thinks that “getting old means being more demanding with desire”. I agree.
The woman apart is the woman freed from the constraining gaze of patriarchy, the joyous divorcee, the save-who-can of the couple and labels.
Just to find out what Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda had become, I subscribed to Crave to watch And Just Like That…the sequel very woke from Sex and the City, iconic series of my thirties. The sulphurous Samantha is only a memory, but there remain the other three, who have reached the blue hour, mid-fifties, “half fig, half grape”.
Romanesque Cinderella-like love is still central to their quest, at an age when we should belong more together. None seem to have blossomed through meditation or kundalini. They are next to their so precious pumps, bending under the diktats of money and its mirages. Admittedly, they send themselves into the air (we have at least escaped the cliché of the invisible menopause), but it lacks a maturity that spares you many regrets and allows you to put everything into perspective. I still love them, but they don’t teach me anything about aging anymore.
A single, elderly woman is twice a woman. Twice as exposed, fragile, feverish.
Who’s afraid of old women?
Funny question that caps the well-camped essay of the young 38-year-old journalist Marie Charrel, Who’s Afraid of Old Women? In fact, according to his investigation, they are scary precisely because they are free AND have become invisible. They have free rein, can talk, impose themselves in the great game that told them “be old and hide” after having been beautiful and having been silent.
Marie Charrel casts a wide net, addressing wrinkles and capitalism (media, cosmetics and surgery): “Don’t change anything but stay young. Don’t cheat, but buy the anti-wrinkle serum on page 52. There’s something to lose your mind about,” talking about sex or invisibility, comparing us to a Louis XVI chest of drawers in the middle of a Swedish living room. Not to mention the “stereotype of the mature but still attractive, humiliated but still dignified woman”.
There are pearls in this rant which denounces a double treatment and a limited imagination as to the possible prospects for a 50-year-old who is not yet too mummified and who will be treated as quinquado as soon as she leaves the CPCH rank, pearl necklace, square Hermes.
“The Church has played a big role in demonizing the elderly woman. Since she is sterile, she can no longer justify, morally, still having an active sexuality. Either you fuck for the cause (reproduction) or you go to the nuns.
Of course, serenity, health and freedom are sometimes privileged leisure activities (although…). But there is one universal thing that I no longer compromise on: respect. In all. My scars, I earned them the hard way.
You can say “tu” to me, but kissing the hand is an asset.
Instagram : josee.blanchette