Today I read two pieces that addressed aging women. The first was an interview wherein Michelle Pfeiffer's describes turning 50 as very "liberating." She talks about the great film roles she feels she has available to her, and the fact that her leading men keep getting younger - something she doesn't mind at all (nevermind that this contradicts most testimonies from 'aging' women actors who face dwindling career opportunites as they exit their 30s and 40s).

I've stumbled across similar stories celebrating older women - like Dame Judy Dench, Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton, even Goldie Hawn and Demi Moore. They are lightly praised for their continuing relevance in their professions, sure, but moreso, for their 'well-preserved' faces and bodies. This isn't new. To be celebrated as an older woman, these reports indicate, you must be age-defying in terms of your looks. The article on Pfeiffer was nice in that it re-orients age more positively, that is, in terms that remind us that, for women, age has been used as a tool of oppression, marking us as irrelevant by a given point in time. And perhaps it doesn't have to be.

The second report I saw today showed how ageism can be wielded like a club - how it can smacked us on the head with a message about how UTTERLY USELESS older women are. And it comes to us from an unsurprising source. Following Pres. Obama's press conference, Bill O'Reilly called venerated White House journalist Helen Thomas "that old lady" and the "Wicked Witch of the East." He suggests that Obama should have 'poured water on her' to 'make her melt' and go away. He does an 'impression' of her voice, and then disparages the question she asked during the meeting, wondering, if Helen Thomas can ask a question, 'why can't MY mother?' A guest commentator joins in the ageist bullshit, stating that Thomas' 'fifteen minutes' were up during the Lincoln administration and that she should 'find something else to do during press conferences.'  Oh yes. She, and all 'old women,' should be shut away where they can live out their irrelevant little lives, filling their days by staring out a window and eating soup. Would that be more comfortable for you, Bill?

Thomas is a brainy woman in a male-dominated arena, and that's clearly intimidating-as-shit for O'Reilly and company. This is such an insidious form of 'putting a woman in her place' kind of rhetoric. If Thomas conformed to normative beauty standards, even given her age, would she have been a target of O'Reilly's vitriol? Or would she be praised for her preternatural attractiveness, in the vein of the above-mentioned women? And there is the obvious double-standard issue that comes into play - shall we discuss O'Reilly's droopy cheeks? Or Dan Rather's eye bags? [NO! Because it's STUPID!]

Because of her non-normative beauty combined with her age, Thomas' continuing relevance to her profession as well as her level of competence to perform her job have been publicly attacked. Is this still not enough to shame FOX into taking B.O. off the air?

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