Prime Time - Jane Fonda [113]
We are also members of the trailblazing sixties generation. We have experienced what it means to confront outmoded, discriminatory status symbols; to throw ourselves behind efforts to achieve equal rights for people of color, for ourselves; and to create new role models of citizenship in the process.
We can’t wait for the young, though we must lead and inspire them. But they are absorbed in becoming and getting—getting a degree, getting a job, getting a partner, getting a house, getting a family, getting a promotion, getting a grip. The middle-aged are in the midst of the fertile void, anxious about youth and about power slipping through their fingers. They’re still scared of elderhood. We’re past that, and, for the most part, we’re through with the “getting,” too.
You may wonder why I speak of elder women (together with girls and men of conscience) as being the ones more likely to lead society toward a new paradigm that is less violent, less unequal, less ageist, racist, sexist, and homophobic. For one thing, many men have been trained to think that the ideas of diplomacy, peace, and equality are effete, too humanistic—sissy stuff that challenges their manhood. In The New Earth, Eckhart Tolle writes that while the ego has gained “absolute supremacy in the collective human psyche,” it is harder for the ego to take root in women than in men because women “are more in touch with the inner body and the intelligence of the organism where the intuitive faculties originate [and have] greater openness and sensitivity toward other life-forms and [are] more attuned to the natural world.” As Gloria Steinem has said, “It’s not that women are morally superior to men, it’s just that we don’t have our masculinity to prove.”
For another thing, there are more elder women than ever before: forty million—51 percent of the aging boomers. Women are the single largest demographic in U.S. history.
Then there’s the fact that women navigate changes and adjustments more easily than men and so have an easier time with aging. While men’s lives have tended to be focused mainly on job or career, women’s have been marked by discontinuity: having babies, balancing careers while keeping house, moving as our husband’s jobs dictate, raising children, then sending them off (often to have them return till they become economically independent, which is happening later and later!). The women’s movement inspired many of us to examine and reappraise our roles in life and work. Then there are the major changes brought on by hormonal shifts. We’ve learned to adjust to discontinuities. The cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson points out that although for much of our lives these discontinuities were seen as vulnerabilities—women’s ways—as we age, our adaptability becomes an asset, a core of our resilience. Besides, we have less to lose from change than men do. Too few of us have ever really been in control within our nation—perhaps even within our families; we’ve suffered the most from the status quo, and in Act III we’re no longer in the marketplace, trying to please. What have we got to lose?
Ready or not, here we are, with more time and experience on our hands and less fear about upsetting anyone. It’s time to scrounge around in our house of memories and pull up the things we once knew and then forgot we knew because knowing meant authenticity—being who we are fully, in the truest sense—and au-thenticity was dangerous. Let’s bring back the girls we once were before we became the women our husbands or bosses thought we ought to be. The girl with hands on hips, jaw jutting, saying, “Oh yeah, says who?” Bring her back, nourish her with our hard-earned wisdom, and let her guide our footsteps as we face our challenges.
One of our challenges is to help one another understand the new global reality and redefine our nation’s place in it. We face a shrinking,