As I was preparing to interview Gail Collins, I got up an extra hour early to dry my hair and put on makeup. I don’t normally do those things, preferring to spend the time sleeping. But the interview was on camera, and I was worried about how people might react if I didn’t put in even just a little extra effort.
It wasn’t lost on me that Collins, a columnist for the New York Times, and I would be talking about age, beauty standards and how the pressures put on women to look a certain way have evolved over time. The overarching theme of her latest book, “No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History,” is about how we define the terms young and old as they apply to the fairer sex — and how those words can be weaponized to undermine a woman’s value in society.
Collins, whose age I won’t cite, got the idea for the book after finding a document encouraging English women to emigrate to the colonies. “If any Maid or single Woman have a desire to go over, they will think themselves in the Golden Age, when Men paid a Dowry for their Wives: for if they be but Civil, and under 50 years of Age, some honest Man or other, will purchase them for their Wives,” the advertisement stated. It was the clause “under 50 years of Age” that caught Collins’ attention. How could it be that women in their 40s were desirable as wives in the 17th century? As Collins discovered, it was an issue of scarcity. Men outnumbered women six to one.
Those labels — young and old — are relative by nature and commonly defined externally. That job, by and large, is left to marketing teams and advertisers and prospective employers or even just the people you meet on the street. Collins takes the readers through more than 350 years of how a woman’s age has affected everything from her career to her marriage prospects to her ability to run for office or advocate for causes. I’ll confess: The journey gave me whiplash. The answers — which mostly applied to white women — changed, and often reversed themselves, by the decade. If 45 was young enough during the colonial era, by 1820, “the attitude toward older women gradually became something close to downright hostility,” Collins writes. Fast-forward about 40 years, and suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton advises after the birth of her last child, “We shall not be in our prime before fifty, and after that we shall be good for twenty years at least.” Throughout the 20th century, the American public afforded opportunity — again mostly to white women and again depending on their age — in fits and starts.
After reading Collin's book, it seemed to me that even though women have made progress in the last 400 years, there are still a number of things remain unchanged — namely the fact that the perception of woman’s age, and her value to society, is inextricably linked to her outward appearance. It’s cliché, but as men get older, gray hair becomes a sign of gravitas. (See: George Clooney). Brad Pitt is allowed to sport bags under his eyes and wrinkles across his face and still be considered desirable. Yet, even in the 17th century, women would put bacon on their faces to ward off wrinkles, according to Collins. Today, the global beauty industry is worth more than half a trillion dollars.
And so it was against that backdrop that I begrudgingly dragged a mascara wand across my eyelashes on a recent Friday morning. As it turned out, Collins wasn't quite feeling ready to be on camera either. A few minutes before the interview was ready to start, she asked if anyone had any eyeliner.
To see Collin's full talk on women and aging in America on The Forum Network, click here.
