The Crone and the Clock: Women and the Taboo of Aging
*Article from Lexington Line Autumn/Winter 2024 Issue, pages 88-91
Check out the full issue here
When I was a child my small hands graced the wrinkly skin on my Yiayia’s arms, and I wondered how bodies could change so drastically. I saw her as a library of wisdom filled with stories only made possible through aging. I also saw her as an old woman, something the culture around me had already taught me to dread.
There are three female archetypes set by ancient Greek culture: the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. I used to envy the Maiden and her promise of freedom, however fleeting it would prove to be. Now in my twenties, I have grown a connection to the possibility of the Mother. And alongside my female peers, a fear of the Crone.
But why—when in many culture, old women have been revered as wise and holy—does this fear still have a hold on us? In one case, after a bad reaction to an intensive skincare regimen, 10-year-old Scarlett Goddard Strahan told the Associated Press that she “didn’t want to get wrinkles and look old.” Will yet another generation of women be tricked out of appreciating the gift of aging?
I surveyed 42 women over the age of 40 and spoke with three 17-year-olds to figure out where women across two important age groups stand on the process of aging. The conversations that came from this showed that women want to speak about the experiences.
After welcoming honesty and removing terror, most came to admit they know that aging is a blessing.
Yet we are programmed to fear it and feel tremors at the first sign of what might be smile lines.
“Children’s films showed older women as hags, villains, shriveled up with nothing left and money,” 17-year-old Sophia told me. “I remember being afraid of women with gray hair in grocery stores because I assumed they were evil; part of me is still afraid of that.”
Rooted in the Greek word “hagia,” the term “hag,” meaning “Holy Woman,” has come to mean something sinister, signifying a lost appreciation of age.
The holiness of menopause and wisdom behind wrinkles now represent the end of the patriarchy’s vision of a woman’s “purpose.” While most humans tremble at signs of mortality, there is an added layer of fear for women; women are partially acclimated to society as passive reproduction machines whose only purpose is the bearing and rearing of children.
Women are “socially handicapped” by their signs of mortality, Barbara G. Walker writes in The Crone: Women of Age, Wisdom, and Power. Femininity is associated with passivity, helplessness and politeness, which are all qualities that age doesn’t improve, as Susan Sontag also points out in “The Double Standard of Aging.”
Masculinity, on the other hand, “is identified with competence, autonomy, self-control—qualities which the disappearance of youth does not threaten.”
Our implicit bias is attracted to the idea of youth and prefers to be surrounded by it. When you set the low expectations for contribution that society unconsciously or very openly has for women against the backdrop of a “sex sells” mindset, it becomes clear why their value decreases.
In her essay, Sontag uses the example of a late-in-life divorce, something most people have either witnessed or experienced.
“The husband has an excellent chance of getting married again, probably to a younger woman,” she writes. “His ex-wife finds it difficult to remarry. Attracting a second husband younger than herself is improbable; even to find someone her own age she has to be lucky, and she will probably have to settle for a man considerable older than herself.”
Cathy, a 42-year-old woman from the survey, related to the anecdote, admitting that the impact aging has on her self-esteem partially stems from being “left for a younger and carefree woman.”
“I feel like all the stress of aging in a woman’s life made me undesirable,” she told me.
50-year-old Beth Reiff added to this idea, revealing to me her perception of aging in men versus women.
“As a man, you have the opportunity to age gracefully with charm and sophistication. As a woman, reaching the pre- to post-menopausal stage presents an uphill emotional battle that’s often expected to be accepted,” Reiff said. “Instead of celebrating the end of menstruation, women must face the psychological and biological depression of menopause.”
The fear women like Cathy have of losing beauty and value as they age can actually complicate menopausal experiences like the one Reiff describes. Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Yale Medical School, explores this in her studies on menopause.
“Where age is more revered and he older woman is the wiser and better woman,” menopause symptoms are “significantly less bothersome,” Minin writes to Reuters. On the opposing side, “where older is not better,” which is in most Western societies, “many women equate menopause with old age, and symptoms can be much more devastating.”
Menopause is a turning point in a woman’s body that has great influence on their mental and physical well-being. Without support and discussion rid of any stigma in Western culture, the initiative to seek medical advice declines.
Discussion about the natural processes of aging in women vanishes because of the stuff that prevents men, youth, and doctors from speaking comfortably about it.
Fabrisia Ambrosio, the Director of the Musculoskeletal Recovery Center at Spaulding, told Harvard Medical School that even with the 75% effect menopause has on age-related disease in women, “less than 1% of published studies considered menopause,” naming this “a big missed opportunity.”
Of 42 women I surveyed, 86% admitted to feeling a lot or some fear of aging, and the majority reflected Minkin’s findings that open discussions about the aging process and better education on menopause would reduce angst and other symptoms.
“It was difficult to find answers or even empathy in a male OBGYN during menopause when I had to switch practicers after moving,” one 68-year-old woman told me. “I know it’s not their job to console you, but I always wished there was more discussion about the positive sides at the end of the tunnel.”
“The pain I experienced on repeat once a month for decades of my life was over,” she wrote.
So, imagine if aging was something anticipated with some measure of enthusiasm. Imagine if, instead of fear-mongering, society embraced age as a chance to advance into something more compelling than childbearing and rearing. Imagine if age was sold as the property of a wise woman, not a useless one.
It may feel like the clock is moving the wrong way. you might rather return to a small frame with smooth skin. But the ticking won’t reverse—the abundance of remedies will run down a sink drain and the consuming dread will waste away time some others don’t get. In other words, you cannot delay the fated portrait of the Crone, so embrace it. And along the way, you might find it improves your quality of life rather than diminishing it.
“You get old you look good for you age, but what is that saying? It tells us we look young. Everyone likes a compliment, but just five it, don’t rationalize it,” one 56-year-old woman told me. “There would be little pressure to feel younger if we embraced aging and gave it value.”