Danielle Crittenden on "The Secret to Staying Young"

My friend Susan C., who has maintained a lively mind and exuberant style for the forty years I've known her, sent me a link; what she sends, I read. I suggest you, too, read "The Secret to Staying Young" by writer, journalist and entrepreneur Danielle Crittenden (via her Substack blog The Femsplainers).

I admired Crittenden, who is just about to turn 60, for tackling a complex topic, and nodded at her thesis, "When I think of the most youthful older people I’ve known, they’ve shared two qualities: Engagement in everything and everyone around them, and a deep mistrust of nostalgia."

This piece, however, addresses women. I wrote to Susan... "I disagree with her claim that 'women my age are often urged to embrace the decline… underlying that is an acceptance of social rejection… if no one cares about me, I’ll look and behave how I want.' "

Let's unpack that "acceptance": What is Danielle Crittenden afraid I would do, freed from needing social approbation? Slug Mai Tais in my Crocs and sarong at 10 a.m.?  Wear rump-sprung sweatpants to a Raging Grannies meetup? Slap on a Tilley hat and wraparound sunglasses for high-stakes Texas Hold 'Em? 

The grown women I know do "look how they want", whether in tweed skirts or vintage silk camisoles. They "behave how they want", or more realistically, strive to be decent persons, as best they can. They question whether roles, expectations, and rules still serve. Granted, they are living in places with good human rights records, free to express themselves.

I wondered, Have I "accepted social rejection" (truly a semantic somersault)? For young women in the '60s, social acceptance was often conflated with sexual viability; if you spent too many Saturday nights sitting home, your dateless state was troubling, even shameful. Fifty years later, I am embarrassed that I was so shallow. I now treasure few markers of social acceptance, but enjoy being greeted at my neighbourhood cafés.

I sat awhile with "relevant": to whom, and regarding what? Irrelevance means there's no reason to get up, and whose responsibility is that? Mine. The higher you set the bar—you are only relevant if respected by an august body, your colleagues, or the sales associates at Louis Vuitton—the more pressure you'll face as time passes. My sphere of relevance has shrunk, but so have pressure and fatigue.

Crittenden is a well-known Canadian-American conservative, author of a book about how the "feminist promise" failed her and her cohort. I was never promised that I could "have it all"; this journalistic trope deliberately distorts the movement. (A good description of the "having it all" distortion is here.)

  

But there were moments when I agreed with her, such as when she says "...one of the great gifts of this stretch of life is the ability to enhance —and even to correct—many of my relationships." 

Crittenden also addresses appearance. She says, "Just because our bodies aren't what they once were doesn't mean we have to dress like nursing home patients", and enjoins readers to "embrace the new". She mentions that her 87-year-old mother wears skirts to show off her still-shapely legs because, "as a friend says, 'the legs are the last thing to go'".  

In conclusion, Crittenden shares a wish:  "…I like to hope there are ways to accept aging and stay relevant in the eyes of the world (as well as to myself.)" She has her work cut out; over time, world has a wandering eye. I wrote to Susan, "The legs are not the last thing to go, the ego is!"  Within the parentheses sits a more gratifying and realistic hope: that she stays relevant to herself. 

A writer closer to my own predilictions, Anna Quindlen, put it this way in her memoir, "Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake": 

"I've finally recognized my body for what it is: a personality-delivery system, designed expressly to carry my character from place to place, now and in the years to come. It's like a car, and while I like a red convertible or even a Bentley as well as the next person, what I really need are four tires and an engine."