Opinion
I was watching the ABC’s new (recycled) series Race Around the World the other day. It features a bunch of budding filmmakers who must go off to various parts of the world, find a story and make a film about it, and there was Margaret Pomeranz.
Pomeranz is 82, so she is certainly the oldest judge on that show and probably one of the oldest women still appearing on TV. As a judge, Pomeranz is blunt, knowledgeable and formidably articulate. If she doesn’t like the young filmmaker’s effort, she makes no bones about it. She doesn’t pussyfoot or soften the blow, but she articulates exactly why she doesn’t think the short film works. If she likes a film, that makes her praise even more worthwhile.
Pomeranz also does short, witheringly funny and sarcastic critiques of reality TV shows for The Weekly. She calls, as an old mate of mine would say, a spade an effing shovel. Except neither my friend nor Pomeranz would likely say “effing”.
That’s the thing about older women; we are world-weary, but in the most positive way. We are funny and straightforward (and sometimes profane) and we take no crap because we are sick of it and can no longer muster the energy to pretend otherwise. We have more important things to worry about, like plucking hairs out of our chins and making sure there is rosé in the fridge.
I recently appeared on a panel with a remarkable and brilliant young feminist. She has great potential to be a formidably unlikeable old woman in a few decades time. Nevertheless, it is frustrating for us older feminists to listen to the same arguments (from the audience, not my fabulous fellow panellist) being recycled like TV shows.
You know the sort of thing: “Are women their own worst enemies?” (No.) “How do we rebrand feminism?” (Feminism is not a brand. It is a revolutionary movement designed to redistribute power.) “Why do young women reject feminism?” (Young women always have; they still have hope things will be different for them. It’s ageing, marriage and motherhood that radicalise women.)
Older women want to help. We want to sound warnings and suggest action, but we know no one likes us much when we do.
JANE CARO
I was polite giving my answers, I promise, but it’s hard. I have answered them all so many times before. And I get that the whole been-there-done-that vibe is very irritating for those who are just having those ideas for the first time. But spare a thought for those of us hearing them for the 50th, especially as we know how unlikeable we will appear if we dare to say so.
Older women want to help. We want to sound warnings and suggest action, but we know no one likes us much when we do. And this is not just my opinion. There is research to back it up. In 2000, a professor at Stanford University gave two groups of students two résumés to assess.
The résumés were identical except one featured a female first name and the other a male name. The students, both male and female, ranked the two candidates equally on skills and accomplishments, as they should, being identical, but the higher they ranked the female candidate’s skills, the lower they ranked her likeability. Not the bloke’s; only hers.
As you age, if you have your eyes, heart and mind open, you learn things. You improve your skills because you’ve had experiences. All of them add to your wisdom. We admire and promote men as they age – see some of our current world leaders – even if our views on their wisdom may, shall we say, diverge.
We fear and despise older women as a job lot. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard, “Oh, I’d love a woman president, just not that woman” about the only two viable candidates tto have stood for the US presidency. If I asked why they didn’t like “that woman”, the answer was often, “I just don’t like her.” I rest my case.
But don’t you dare feel sorry for me or any of my contemporaries because, frankly, we no longer much care. We have finally understood that no matter what shape we twist our opinions, bodies, faces and behaviour into, or how much we placate, defer and soothe, we will never be likeable. So, along with all the salty-tongued, acerbic women who still pop up occasionally in the public square (Margolyes, Fonda, Doogue, Atwood, Mirren, Dench, Lennox and, of course, Pomeranz), most of us have also learned we no longer give a flying eff.
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