Hot Thoughts: Best of Luck, Joan. By Dish Stanley
Occasionally I sound off.
I’m not watching The Golden Bachelorette, are you? I liked Joan Vassos in The Golden Bachelor and wish her well. It’s certainly not the case that I was more interested in seeing women compete for a man’s love than I am in seeing men compete for Joan’s, it’s just that I guess one was enough? I may change my mind and check it out, but with so much good stuff to watch right now I just haven’t felt compelled enough to tune in.
One thing I will say is that the critiques I’ve been seeing about the “youth washing” with Joan (and of the other women who were on The Golden Bachelor) feel off to me. Yes, Joan (and the other women) look younger than most women their respective ages do in the real world. And yeah, sure, that probably undermines a the series’ pro-age message. But aren’t most people on television - broadly speaking - younger and more beautiful looking than the rest of us? They’re not representative. They’re on television! It’s a visual medium.
More importantly, I’m not particularly interested in questioning the choices anyone else makes about how they age. About what makes them feel better or more comfortable or more authentically them as they confront the unavoidable, unrelenting years. Aging brings up a lot of deep and complicated emotions for all of us. What you choose to do about how you age is informed by a plethora of often intense internal and external factors. Things like how your parents age (or aged) and how they felt about it, whether/how aging impacts your career, whether you’re in a long-term, happy marriage with a partner who adores you as you are, or you’re single and dating. Where you live. What you can afford.
I have a couple of male friends whose respective fathers died early and suddenly of heart attacks while my friends were in their teens. They are both flooded with fears of their own mortality. Each copes differently. One has stuck to a very strict health regimen since his 20’s, long before anybody else was and at a time when it limited his socializing. (He didn’t drink, ate a macrobiotic diet.) The other shared with me that every time he has looked in the mirror since the first lines started to emerge around his eyes he has felt a literal clenching in his stomach. “I won’t see my daughter turn 30,” he once said to me. “I know it.”
I was at lunch with some girlfriends recently when one of them, Hilary, commented that a woman we all knew had had “a lot of work done.” This was in Boston, and in a subculture where obvious cosmetic work - or wearing much make-up - is viewed as déclassé. Without missing a beat my friend Whitney responded, “You know that Michael [her husband] left her on the day they dropped Ken [their youngest kid] off for his freshman year at University of Vermont, right? For a girlfriend 20 years younger?” (Of course Hilary knew; everyone knew.)
That’s about as close as Whitney will ever come to saying “Back off and shut the fuck up.” (Precisely what was on the tip of my tongue.)
The obvious need not be stated, but I will. Joan, and all of the women who were on the The Golden Bachelor, are out in the often cruel world of dating in their 50’s and 60’s — a world that is age and beauty obsessed. As a widow who dated through my fifties, I am obviously sympathetic to their realities. I have a particular sensitive spot for those who judge them (meaning, judge “us“) on how we look, what we do to keep up or what we wear. Even close friends who are long and happily married can forget how brutal their sly comments can be, as they look on at “us” from the comfort of being safely protected from the world of romantic rejection themselves.
I just don’t see that there‘s one way to age (let’s say, without interventions) that is morally superior to another (let’s say, with a little or even a lot of intervention). What we think and say about the choices others make is more than anything a statement about how we feel in our own bodies, and the choices we make for ourselves. The friends who ”would never” color their hair/use fillers/get plastic surgery for whatever personal or practical reasons (sometimes social pressures) are often the first to notice and jump on the news that somebody else, who looks “so refreshed,” has.
Let’s give each other (and ourselves) the kindness of a lot of space and very little judgment about the choices we all make on how we move along the path of getting older, say I.
And that includes Joan. Best of luck to her. I hope one of those bachelors is your next great love, Beautiful.
If *you* are tuned into The Golden Bachelorette I’d love to hear how you’re finding it. Really, really I would. Am I missing out? Let me know at Dish@PrimeCrush.com.
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