Rant Women Reimagining the Second Half of Life

I think one of the problems is that the former often feels impossible to many younger women. Maybe not literally, but if they want to study and learn to drive and establish a career and want children, which there’s only a short window for biologically, if can feel impossible for many I think. The economic freedom and stability feel much more out of reach for young women than for young men.

But being beautiful feels achievable. Loose some weight, get a skin care routine, learn basic nutrition and cooking, get a decent hair cut/dye and some on trend clothes.

All of those feel possible, within grasp, to a 16/17/18/19 year old. Finishing up a valuable degree, gaining the work experience needed, and getting a well paid, secure career established and a house bought, often all feel out of reach and so far away that by the time they get there, children wont be a possibility.

I agree with your point 100%. I just think it’s often hard for young women to feel these are within grasp. And things like extra shifts leaving them walking home alone in the dark or renting a crappy room in an unsafe area, are not the same choice for women as they are for men. In comparison to these, learning how to do make up or get fitter seem much more feasible choices.

YES. Also, stop consuming beauty-based media -- youtube, magazines, etc.

Focus on economic independence: this so much!

And building on your mentioning the beauty treadmill, my advice to younger women: your goals should be less about beauty and more about healthiness instead.

Personally, I love the myth and archetypes stuff, but I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea. I hope you'll be able to just mentally navigate around the parts you don't like and still find a lot of that "deep, eternal female wisdom injected into [your] consciousness" (love that phrasing!)

Yes, it does have a WWRWW feel, doesn't it? That book has been like a bible for me that I reread again and again when different situations in my life need a new perspective. I haven't ordered this one yet, because I am in the middle of too many books already and am making myself finish a few before I'm allowing myself to buy new ones. But now I've got another on my list - thanks for the heads up about the Victoria Smith one coming out. I'd love if this became a genre.

So, so, so true! Most of us look back and can see the warnings we were given but didn't heed.

Indeed, airways remember a friend of my mother's sorry about her grandmother overheating her and her new boyfriend leaving their house one evening. When she returned, her grandmother asked hey to promise never to marry that man. Only overheard them leaving...

Reader, she did!

Ensured a couple of horrid decades before she finally being free. We often wondered afterwards what she heard him say; now we're older, we've realised the script they use only ever slightly varies. The same manipulations are used because they work!

That's why having other women around is great. We earn reach other add it's the same bullshit trotted out and used by every generation, with a few tweaks!!!

Ha! Thanks for pointing out autocorrect typo. Fixed now.

I think you are totally right about the isolation abuse tactic and men wanting women to stay naive so we can be manipulated. I think that there are certain rites of passage we are meant to go through as women in such a way that they helps us wisen up and come into our true power and shed our ability to be manipulated, but patriarchy has twisted them and made them into something to be feared, or problems to be solved by (usually male) authority figures and medical industries. I'm thinking about menopause clearly here, but also birth and other moments of our lives. So what we have is generations of older women who are older, but not wiser, who still act like girls, desperate for the approval of men and waiting for someone to save them (thinking of my mother here).

And yes, intergenerational connection between women is so vital. This is part of why I don't particularly like the framing of "waves" of feminism, because it pits one wave against the one that came before, like a rebellious daughter rejecting her mother. Does any other social movement do this? The labor movement? Racial justice movements? Not as far as I can tell. By cutting young women off from the wisdom of those who came before, society sets them up for predation. And that is precisely the point.

Ok, I'm going off on tangents here, but basically I loved your comment and I totally agree.