MATURING MEN, AGING WOMEN

Margaret Thatcher once said: “In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” At the time, I did not understand what she was talking about, nor did I realize the fact that she was actually using gender stereotypes. It just sounded funny to me!  Coming to think about it though, it does bring to the surface a certain mentality that we, as a society, tend to associate with.  And this is the fact that we are inclined to use stereotypes in our everyday living.

Gender stereotypes are simplistic generalizations about the gender attributes, differences, and roles of individuals and/or groups.  Stereotypes may be positive or negative, but they rarely communicate accurate information about others. Nevertheless, when it comes to gender, double standards are alive and well.

You are probably wondering where I’m taking this… Well let me tell you!  If a man has a messy home, then he really has more important things to do, while a woman with a messy home is, plain and simple, lazy! If a woman is blunt and assertive, speaking her mind, she is deemed bossy, aggressive and arrogant, while a man is simply showcasing his executive leadership skills. Men like to talk in a polemical way, whereas women’s talking is milder.  Women can’t work on technical things and are not good at “hands on” projects, men separate their lives into compartments and work on one at a time, women become nurses, men become doctors … And it goes on and on, as these inequalities arguably exist because it is common practice for people to judge men and women’s behavior by different standards.  Even television, books, comic strips and movies are all abundant sources of stereotypes characters, with Homer Simpson being the biggest example of the American stereotype as perceived by the world. 

These stereotypes however, also exist in terms of appearance. Wrinkles on the forehead of a man present “great thinking” and “maturity”, while for women, it simply means they are getting old!  Women who have a few extra pounds, fullness in the thighs or around the stomach, will never show up in a TV commercial or a magazine, while no restrictions apply to an overweight man.

Which reminds me of another example: hair color, which actually presents an interesting distinction between men and women.  When a woman encounters a “Silver Fox” (an older man with gray hair), she finds him sexy.  Gray hair does not imply the man is unfit, physically or emotionally.  It implies wisdom, maturity, experience and stability.  Put gray hair on a woman and she is not going to be sexy, no matter who she is.  Hair coloring is something completely acceptable and even expected for women.  If she allows herself to gray naturally, she is not concerned about being attractive, therefore, why should men be attracted to her?  Now, if men color their hair, people see it as silly and vain and it is also seen as a display of low self-confidence.  Take George Clooney, Pierce Brosnan and John Slattery for example.  Their silver locks distinguish them by giving them a mature, sophisticated, smart look … but take a woman with gray hair and she immediately falls in the category of “not taking care of herself, frumpy”!

But it does not stop there … the great advantage men have over women is that our culture allows two standards of male beauty: the boy and the man.  The single standard of beauty for women though, dictates that every wrinkle, every line, every gray hair, is a defeat.  And it is true that no boy minds becoming a man, while even the passage from girlhood to early womanhood is experienced by many women as their downfall, and all women are trained to continue wanting to look like girls: young and fresh.  We tend to glorify youth in women … and when certain parts start … well, “heading south”, we also tend to see that as a sign that the whole person is out to pasture!

It is unfair, but the aggravating truth is that older men can remain desirable without spending a single cent on botox, lifts, plucks and tucks. But this also explains why 95% of the patients at a plastic surgeon’s office are women, looking for facelifts, liposuctions, abdominoplasty, breast surgeries, etc.!