BF: The research shows that people who do continue to grow and
develop become more authentically themselves. They become liberated from
some of the conflicts and guilts and "shoulds" that paralyzed them in the
past. I've been liberated that way simply by writing this book.
There's something about affirming the totality of yourself, the way
you are authentically. I am myself at this age. There's something about
that that's enormously liberating. You realize you don't have to live up
to some of the things that have haunted you, that have driven you.
And then you become a truth-teller in a way. And you can risk
yourself in new ways. Now that I've finished this book I'm getting ready
to go on an Amazon expedition. It depends on the rainy season and the
bugs, because I can't stand bugs. Then I'll explore Australia in
March.
PT: Are others are as lively as you?
The reality is that people are doing new things at this age. I
wrote about my doctor--an obstetrician-gynecologist I went to when I had
a menopause that was no big deal. He's become a songwriter. In his late
60s he's started writing songs. He went to a songwriting workshop
sponsored by the composers' organization and he found that he could do
it. He's having a marvelous time. I asked him whether he's sold any yet.
He said, "No, but I will."
You can try things that you didn't try before. In addition, there
is a great need to knit together the pieces of your life. And I think
there is a great need to continue in terms of purposes that go beyond
yourself. I see that in my own life. You have to keep nurturing these
sides. Also, with this book and the women's movement, despite all the
conflicts that I've had, I have been affirming a marvelous opening in
life all along-and it isn't finished yet. This book. It's part of the
ongoing stream of life and that's important.
PT: Is this the happiest time of your life?
BF: I have a lot of energy. There have been moments of great
happiness. But this is a time of being less hemmed in. More free. It's a
very happy time.
Once you break through this mystique of age only as decline and you
look at it as a new period of human life in its own terms, then
everything else is different. Do you love the way you loved when you were
30 or you don't love at all? No. Love is still open to new possibilities,
but there are different ones. You have to look with fresh eyes on what
you didn't think you were supposed to be interested in anymore.
We need to see that the word old has been so wrongly applied, or
youth is so much the existing definition of life that it doesn't
apply.
PHOTO: Betty Friedan (JOYCE RAVID/ONYX)
FROM THE BOOK...
The denial of age carried to its extreme is, finally, the
unadulterated horror of second childhood, a vision of ourselves
regressing to a childlike state. If we are banished from previous adult
roles after sixty-five, and denied the very possibility of future growth
or the use of our mature abilities in society, when we can no longer ape
youth, we can only regress to second childhood. Consider:
o A feature entitled "The Fun Life for Young and Old" in the Boston
Globe, offering "a guide to August activities for senior citizens and
children"--a puppet show, a magic act, etc.
o A pharmaceutical ad for the stool softener Doxidon shows a
smiling, bifocaled older woman: "Minnie moved her bowels today. The day
started right for Minnie. That young doctor fella gave her Doxidon to
take last night, and it worked!"... Minnie figures she's got the smartest
doctor in town."
o A newspaper reports that the patients at a nursing home "held
their very own Christmas party," exclaiming, incredulously, that the
patients "planned the party, made the invitations, decorated the cookies,
and took part in the entertainment." Why is this "second childhood" image
so repulsive? A Gerontologist has said that it suggests that older people
"are losing, or have lost, the very things a growing child gains. It
implies a backward movement to earlier developmental stages. "And, of
course, the pervasive attempt of older people to emulate or pass for
young logically culminates in mockery and denial of our adult personhood
and the years of risk, pain, joy and learning that got us there, a
denigration of our grown-up selves.
When the gerontologist Robert Kastenbaum surveyed a large
cross-section of people on the age they "expect to live to" and the age
they "want to live to," one out of four wanted to die before their time.
In fact, the suicide rate for people over sixty-five has been increasing
steadily in America--only 11 percent of the population, they account
roughly 25 percent of reported suicides. The suicide rate is highest
among older white men-45.9 per 100,000 aged seventy-five to
seventy-nine.
It's time that we start searching for the Fountain of Age, time
that we stop denying our growing older and look at the actuality of our
experience and that of other women and men who have gone beyond denial to
a new place in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. It's time to look at age on its
own terms, and put names on its values and strengths, breaking through
the definition of age solely as deterioration or decline from youth. The
problem is how to break through the cocoon of our illusory youth and risk
a new stage in life, where there are no prescribed roles, no models, nor
rigid rules or visible rewards-how to step out into the true existential
unknown of these years of life now open to us and to find our own term
for living them.
Tags:
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American culture,
Betty Friedan,
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decline,
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feminine mystique,
feminism,
fountain of age,
gender,
images of men,
media,
men and women,
role of women,
role of women in society,
simon schuster,
suburban housewife,
thirty years,
three decades,
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