[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited August 27, 2004).]
Note from Kathleen:
quote:No matter who wrote it, I don't think we have permission to reprint it here, so I've deleted it. The link to the original is still there, though, so please read it and continue the discussion.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited August 27, 2004).]
Unfortunately, I found most of those statements to be stunning generalizations. There seem to be quite a lot of women over thirty whose main preoccupation is with trying to look under thirty....that doesnt' seem like a woman who is happy with who she is.
I also took some exception to this one: "Women over 30 could not care less if you are attracted to her friends because she knows her friends will not betray her."
It's not a matter of trusting your friends (although a woman under thirty who can't trust her friends obviously needs new ones) it's a matter of trusting the man she's with. She shouldn't care if he's attracted to her friends because she trust him not to act on it and she's sure enough of herself to know that she's enough woman for him. I don't know if women over thirty are any better at separating the lookers from the players than women under thirty...
Do you really think 80% of women don't want marriage? Sounds horrid. Heaven help us if it is true. (At least I'm married. I don't have to worry about it anymore. But my kids will...)
posted
I agree with some of what Andy said, (well, actually a lot, even it it is stereotypical) but he still comes across as just an apologist for men.
Have any of you written a character like that into your work? An apologist? Not just for men, but for any other cause? I think that would make for an interesting character, irritating, but still memorable.
posted
Interesting. It doesn't matter to me who wrote it, I guess. I just thought the content could make for some good discussion.
While I agree with part of what is written, I think it is a bit of a sweeping generalization. I don't know as it is older women who have a greater ability to discern things, but I suppose they tend to know themselves better. The result is that they behave in a more self assured manner.
You don't have to be 30+ for this to happen. I think if a person who knows who they are and feels secure in that knowledge, they will act accordingly.
posted
I believe it was Ursula LeGuin who pointed out that there's two ways to effectively distance yourself from someone. The first is to revile them; the second is to deify them. In either case you're denying them their full humanity and alienating them from yourself. The example LeGuin uses is women in the Victorian era, who were infalliably typecase as the Fallen Woman (from which one was to recoil in fastidious horror) or the Good Little Woman (which one was to place on a pedestal). She further observed that most science fiction aliens fall into one category or the other.
I'm not sure how I feel about this particular article (though it tends to the pedestal side), but in general, that does seem to be the response of our culture to the elderly. They are either belittled as senile, behind the times, inconsequential - or treated with a vague and unconvencing reverence as "repositories of wisdom" and dispensers of homilies. Either one makes it easier to ignore age.
I doubt older women, as a group, are easier to get along with, or more trusting, or less wishy-washy than younger women (and half this stuff sounds like more male fantasizing anyway... like the bit about "meaninful relationships." Clearly, older men haven't necessarily grown up either.) I doubt they're harder to get along with, less trusting, or more uncertain as well. Older women are just like younger women: individuals. No more, no less, and no easier to categorize.
Sorry, I was responding to the article, not the discussion so much, and the article linked here is talking about 60-plus women.
I'm assuming, from the discussion, that the stuff you posted earlier and which got deleted by the moderator was about 30-plus women, but I never saw that, so I can't really comment on it *grin*.
And I'm 23, just old enough to discover that birthdays have stopped taking forever to arrive and started sneaking up on me at a bewildering speed. I can see where this trend is going. Thirty is definately NOT elderly....
I do agree with you that the piece really is full of generalizations,for all its sweet sentiment. Amd that kind of generalization serves to distance just as much as the 'pit or pedistal' categorizations do.
One thing I do think happens with age is that however a person is when they are young (their distinguishing characteristics) tends to intensify. A grumpy complainer becomes more so; a 'glass half full optimist (yikes, where's the spell check?) becomes more so. A major life event can change a person and that's the stuff of story. One of the really fun parts of reading (and writing too, I'll bet) generation stories is to find out how a character becomes over time.
There are 'gal pal' stories showing teen relationships grown up as adult career /childbearing age relationships. Are there some that go older? To the (shudder) very old age of 60?
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