Daily Excerpt: Creative Aging (Vassiliadis and Romer) - Feminism and Aging
Excerpt from Creative Aging (Vassiliadis & Romer) -
Feminism and Creative Aging
Feminism is a word that sets
some people’s teeth on edge (visions of bra-burning and man-hating fanatics
flash into mind), but there’s really no other word that describes the
revolution in attitudes toward women that took place in the 1970s. Feminism, like
it or not, has had an enormous impact on aging Baby Boomers as they make life
choices for the next span of their existence.
Feminism, defined, simply
means the drive toward equality for women in all aspects of personal and
professional life. We have not reached true equality—salaries, for instance,
still are not equal between men and women—but compared to the households many Baby
Boomers were raised in, things have definitely changed.
My mother, for example, did
not have a job while my brother and I were growing up. She was there to greet
us every day when we got home from school. A physical education teacher before
she married my father, Mother had myriad interests and could well have found a
job, but it was the custom in the 1950s for middle-class mothers to stay home,
organize Brownie and Cub Scout troops, oversee children’s art and music
lessons, and otherwise be on call for the kids. (Some would say things haven’t
changed that much!)
Mother was never
unoccupied—she had several of her young adult stories published; she entered
slogan-writing contests and won a few. She learned and performed a number of
exotic dances, including the hula, and maintained a steady interest in the
paranormal: Psychic Discoveries behind the Iron Curtain was one of her
favorite books. Mother didn’t have a college degree, but she got one in French
after I’d graduated from college. She promptly took off on a trip to France to
celebrate—at age 59, alone, without my father.
Was my mother a feminist?
She could have been if she’d been born a little earlier or a little later. She
was definitely a free spirit for her times and a blessing for me.
It was my mother who gave me
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking book that
inspired the Women’s Movement of the 1970s. Mother urged me to have a career
and applauded when I moved to New York after winning a Mademoiselle magazine
competition. When, after two marriages, I still had no children, Mother didn’t
complain. “I have a feeling someday you’ll have more children than you know
what to do with,” she remarked enigmatically. (She was right: for the last 16
years I’ve been teaching communications at universities in New York and Florida
and have probably taught 3,000 kids.)
The point is that feminism
by whatever name has become an accepted part of Baby Boomers’ lives, due in
large part to the encouragement of their mothers and, to some extent, their
fathers. In the 1950s and 1960s, children grew up under the silent tutelage of
Dr. Benjamin Spock, baby guru. His loving brand of permissiveness gave a lot of
us confidence to believe we could do anything. For little girls, that meant
more than just nabbing a husband. We could be athletes, scientists, teachers,
or other kinds of career women. When The Feminine Mystique burst upon
the scene, revealing the hidden longings and frustrations of our mothers—well,
for many of us there was just no choice. Married or not, we were going to have
a career!
********
Dr. Paula McKenzie has been
involved in the Women’s Movement since its early days in the 1970s. “I started
doing public relations for N.O.W. [National Organization for Women] in Kentucky
in 1978,” she told me. “The Equal Rights Amendment—the ERA—was the big thing.”
In 1984 Dr. McKenzie moved
to Vermont, where she became involved with the Vermont Coalition to pass the
ERA. While in Vermont, she met Molly Yard, a former assistant to First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt. Yard became the 8th president of N.O.W. (Betty Friedan was
the first.) “We lost the ERA in 1986,” Dr. McKenzie said. “Every year after
that, we tried to get it through Congress.”
Committed to the Women’s
Movement, Dr. McKenzie moved to Washington D.C. in 1987 and started working
with N.O.W. at the national level. She served as a board member of the National
Woman’s Party for 15 years, holding the office of vice-president. She was
appointed by three different mayors for a spot on the D.C. Commission for Women
and served nine years. During that time, she was also involved in women’s
consciousness raising, mentoring groups at George Washington University for ten
years.
“Betty Friedan was the
person who advised me to accept a full-time teaching offer,” Dr. McKenzie said.
“She thought I would be able to share some of the principles of the Women’s
Movement.” Currently, Dr. McKenzie is a tenured
Associate Professor of Speech Communication at a historically black college and
university in Florida.
What are the principles of
the Women’s Movement? “Equality,” Dr. McKenzie said. “Justice. Freedom. My
students don’t talk about these principles much today. I did a study asking why
young women don’t call themselves feminists. They don’t believe in feminism,
but they do believe in sharing duties at home, in equal access to jobs, all the
things that feminism is.”
Dr. McKenzie, who grew up in
a small town in Alabama and didn’t begin work on her Ph.D. until she was 40,
says she wouldn’t have had the life she’s led without the Women’s Movement. “I
found my voice,” she said. “Thanks to the Women’s Movement, I don’t have to
have a man in my life. I can take care of myself, live independently, and be a
property owner.”
According to Dr. McKenzie,
the Women’s Movement is in large part responsible for this. “By the mid-1970s,
there were displaced homemakers groups. No-fault divorce came out of those
groups. I benefited from no-fault divorce.”
Dr. McKenzie urges senior
Boomers to continue to fight for women’s rights, no matter what age they are.
“The documentarian Ken Burns, who made a film about the lives of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, stated he thought the Women’s Movement was the
most important social movement of the 20th century,” Dr. McKenzie said. “Use
your voice to make a difference. You do count; you have responsibilities.
Inspiring words from a woman who was there from the beginning!
********
The roots of the activities
of many Baby Boomers today can be traced to the feminist movement of the
1970s—men as well as women. Men who married the liberated women of the 1970s
became liberated themselves. They learned, not without a struggle, that their
partners were serious when they said “50/50”. These liberated men began washing
dishes and cooking meals; they weren’t allowed to sit around and let the women
wait on them. Now, as seniors, we see Baby Boomer men showing their skills in
the kitchen and taking a hand with the housework. With both partners retired
from regular jobs, it’s pretty easy to split household tasks down the middle.
Where else do we see
evidence of the Women’s Movement among Boomers? The area of encouragement would
be one: each partner encouraging the other to carry out projects and tasks
according to that individual’s dreams, just as they learned to do in the 1970s.
So if Jane, 61, wants to start her own real estate business, Dick, her husband,
is quick to give her a helping hand, designing flyers with his new software
program and taking photos of Jane for her ads. Similarly, when Dick, 60, wants
to become a full-time artist, his wife Jane takes a break from real estate
sales and goes along on the art festival circuit, using her people skills to
talk to potential customers in Dick’s kiosk. Sure, it’s not always smooth, but
it’s expected that both partners have a right to fulfill their senior
ambitions. One of the reasons senior Boomers are so active these days is
because both partners are active. Unless one partner is sick and needs
caregiving, both seniors expect full freedom and support in their endeavors.
When I began my
post-retirement teaching career at the age of 53, my husband Jack and I spent
hours creating video excerpts of movies for me to show in my mass
communications classes. A TV producer and editor in New York for many years,
Jack coached me how best to appear in front of a camera (I was teaching via
closed circuit television, broadcast to four campuses). In return, I wrote
scripts and did voice-over narration for my 58-year old husband as he embarked
upon his new video production business in Daytona Beach, doing pro-bono
infomercials for the local Chamber of Commerce. Such partnerships are not
unusual for Boomers. Used to helping each other out as young adults, they now
know how to do it with expertise as they head into their golden years. The fruits
of the Women’s Movement are taken for granted these days, but before 1970 such
support was hard to come by.
********
It has been said that,
unlike men, women don’t reach their full creative power until the age of 50.
Until that time, raising a family, caring for a husband, and working to help
support the household budget cramp a woman’s ability to be all she can be. Since
the 1970s, when women entered the workplace as never before, expectations as to
what a woman could achieve have skyrocketed. In fact, there was a time during
the 1980s when females were striving to be “superwoman”. Having it all
meant holding down a full-time meaningful job with many responsibilities,
raising children just like their mothers did in the 1950s (swim practice, art
lessons, non-stop carpooling), running the house, socializing with hubby’s
business associates, and much, much more. While that practice has continued for
some, many women decided to give up one or more of the superwoman activities,
determining what was best for them and their families in the long run without
trying to do it all at once.
The women who put their
dreams on hold for a while, having had a little taste of those dreams, have now
decided it’s time to reclaim them. Their children are grown and maybe hubby has
retired or is engaged in a post-retirement activity of his own. These women are
finding out the truth of the “powerful 50s” adage, and most are pleased to
discover that their energy and ability are going strong beyond the 50s. Some
say 60 is the new 50, and some even claim that 70 is the age we’ve been waiting
for all our lives, the time when everything comes together in a way we would
never have imagined in our 20s, when 70 was, well, old.
I am one of those women. At
age 68, I am finding I have more creative energy than I’ve had in decades.
Where does this energy come from, and how does it relate to feminism?
It’s like this: in our
younger days, we had jobs, but we always reserved a great part of our physical
energy to take care of our husband and/or family. If we didn’t have a husband,
we were searching for one. As a widow of two years who has been married most of
my adult life, I have come to the realization that I can now do whatever I
want. If I feel like working on a creative project until 11:30 at night and
then watching TV for a couple of hours, I can do so. If I want to go to the
beach, write all afternoon, and then come home with a Sonny’s Bar B Q sandwich
for supper, I can do so. If I want to put off doing housework until I’ve
finished the first draft of my book, I can do that, too. That’s saying a lot,
isn’t it? If you’re a woman in a similar position, you know what I mean.
This freedom can trace its
roots to feminism, which claims that women have as much right to discover who
they are as do men. That means, discovering who you are in terms of
intellectual capabilities, talents and personal tastes. The liberated men of
the 1970s and 1980s helped us gals realize our independence, and my gratitude
to my late husband Jack is immense. So now, approaching that power peak of 70
(the new 50), I feel as optimistic, energized, and ambitious as I did at 23
when I arrived in New York to take on my first magazine job.
I’m not saying our bodies
always cooperate with our fabulous goals; they don’t. Another aspect of
feminism that has lingered on for many women, though, is that it’s not about
looks. We can be dynamic, caring, dedicated, funny, and even outrageous—no
matter how we look. We are that unique. We are that independent. We are that
“young”.
I like the commercial of the
woman walking along the beach whose swimsuit cover-up blows away, yet she keeps
on walking. This woman is only about 20, but lately, I’ve been doing this too:
walking on the beach in my two-piece bathing suit, without a cover up, without
a qualm. Now, I don’t have a swimmer’s body, a runner’s body, or the body of
someone who goes to the gym every day. I have a 68-year-old body and all that
it entails, but wearing a two-piece, I can feel the sun hit my stomach and bare
back, inspiring something in me, something creative and regenerative. I raise
my arms toward the sky and stretch, feeling the breeze on my torso, in a way
that is thrilling. I am alive, as never before, and I feel absolutely ageless.
********
The Women’s Movement changed
us in more ways than we realize. Before the 1970s, there existed a perceived
mistrust among women. This was reflected in women’s magazines and in movies
like “The Women,” re-made in 2008 starring Meg Ryan. As we moved toward the end
of the 1960s, changes were already beginning to occur. Young women, many of
whom had read The Feminine Mystique in college, were banding together to
support this cause or that. Such joining together naturally created a bond, and
women found they could talk to each other as never before—openly, without
shame, without fear of having their secrets broadcast to the clique or
community out of a misplaced “cattiness”. As the anti-war movement progressed
and women took greater leadership roles, their gender solidarity tightened. Men
in the anti-war movement didn’t start out liberated. Anything but! However, by
1975, the first Year of the Woman as proclaimed by the United Nations, many men
were embracing the idea of female equality—at home and in the workplace.
This triumph brought women
together because there was so much more to be done. Consciousness-raising
groups sprouted everywhere as women read The Golden Notebook, The Female
Eunuch, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, and Fear of Flying. Suddenly,
women realized they could trust other women with their most intimate secrets.
This in itself was a revolution.
The trust that exists
between Baby Boomer women today is part of the great surge in creative energy
called Creative Aging. Many women still have friends from the 1960s, 1970s, and
1980s, women with whom they first discussed such intimate subjects as orgasms,
masturbation, and birth control. Once intimacy is established between women, it
pretty much remains a given. You don’t go back to repressing communication with
a friend you’ve been open with for 25 years or a new friend whom you realize is
“coming from the same place” as you.
What is that place? It is a
consciousness that looks at women’s friendship as a special gift—a space to
share dreams that may have lain dormant for years. It is a place to feel
empowered.
Not long ago my co-author
and I belonged to such a group, a post-women’s lib consciousness-raising type
group formed under the auspices of The Artist’s Way. Originally a book
that sprouted support groups for both men and women, The Artist’s Way endeavors
to kick-start latent creative talents that have been suppressed for years. Our
group was composed of eight women, and it became rather feminist.
Our leader, Diane Hall
(interviewed later in this book) encouraged complete openness; thanks to this,
the spirit of camaraderie was high. We discussed problems with finding time to
do creative projects or just mull them over; we talked about fear of failure
and fear of success. Most of the group were married and had many activities
with their husbands so we talked about how to carve a niche for ourselves and
our projects in between husband’s needs, ailing parents’ needs, and even
grandchildren’s needs. The type of conversations among Baby Boomer women today
and the encouragement and support among women of a certain age can be directly
traced back to the Women’s Movement.
If the Women’s Movement was
the most important social movement of the 20th century, as some have said, it
is because Baby Boomers have made it so. The fact that women in their 50s, 60s,
and beyond feel free to pursue their dreams, unfettered by guilt and social
restrictions, can be directly traced to the Women’s Movement of the 1970s, and
the fact that men are helped in the pursuit of their post-retirement dreams by
women who are free of resentment and who are themselves creatively fulfilled
can also be traced to this movement, which seems to have changed us all in ways
our mothers never would have imagined.
GUIDELINES FOR SUPPORTING
CREATIVE AGING WITH FEMINISM
1.
Go out to lunch with a good
friend and start talking about the Women’s Movement. See if you don’t feel
inspired after half an hour to do something you haven’t done lately or have
never done before.
2.
Look through old scrapbooks
and photo albums for pictures of yourself in the 1970s. What did you like about
that young woman? Make a list.
3.
Start a group. It can be any
kind of group—cooking, crocheting, gardening, or writing—but allow time for
talking. See if you can engender some meaningful discussions during your
meetings.
4.
Write down all the ways that
the Women’s Movement had an impact on you personally: jobs you got, help from
hubby on a project, etc. Be grateful for this!
5.
Look over that list again.
Are there any areas that are unfulfilled? See if you can do something about
that now.
- Joanna
USA Best Books Awards finalist
For more posts about Cheryl Vassiliadis and Joanna Romer and their book, click here.
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