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NOW YOU SEE ME..By MAGGIE ALDERSON
E--mail to all women under 40. Subject: becoming invisible.
When I was in my twenties I read an interview with a woman in her fifties-I forget who, someone famous-in which she said that when you reach a certain age, as a woman, you become invisible. Not just to men, but to the world.
The words filled me with horror and terror. To the youngest of four children of a beautiful, extrovert mother (look at me! look at me, someone!), it seemed a cruel and terrible fate. How unfair, how savage, how horrible that, due to some vestigial Darwinian programrning, as soon as we reach the age when we are no longer fully viable baby vehicles, we cease to exist. I don't breed, therefore I'm not.
I recently became invisible.
I have felt it coming on during the past couple of years and, believe me, at first I raged, raged against the dying of the light. I broke world flirting records to make artractive young men, (waiters, shoe-shop assistants, fridge deliverers in short shorts), acknowledge me still as a sexual being, even if it were only for a moment: "I bet she was cute when she was young.' I didn't want to consummate any of that flirting, but I wasn't ready to let go of it as a mode of communication. I wasn't ready to give up the twinkle in the eye I have known since I was 14 years old.
Which is funny, really, seeing as I spent most of my youth loathing and resenting it. I found all that sweaty male attention creepy and scary. Then I got used to it. Then it was hard to let it go. Now I'm invisible and I have to get used to that.
I only came to fully accept this as a reality tonight. I'm writing to you from New York and, earlier this evening, I took myself out to dinner - alone - in a groovy new restaurant, (Canteen, in SoHo, designed by Mark Newson, it's cool). I had a great time. I didn't read a book. I didn't bolt my food. I savoured my wine. I was happy with my own thoughts. And my own company.
When I was 26 - the age I now consider my peak - I could never have done that. I would have sat in the restaurant, a mass of selfconsciousness, convinced everyone was looking at me, thinking:
"Who is Noddy No Friends having dinner on her own?". Now I realise a lot of people probably would have been looking at 26-year-old me dining alone, but they would have been thinking, "She's a babe, wonder if she'd like some company."
Not that I was ever beautiful. I never knew that strange power, but I was cute, a blue-eyed blonde with child-bearing tits. It was a look with currency - for a 26-year-old. And that is what I want you all to understand: whatever you look like now, you have a glow that will fade with age, so enjoy it while you have it, but don't fret about its inevitable passing. Because there are compensations.
No-one sent me over a drink or a business card or even a second glance tonight. I was as much a part of the fixtures in Canteen as the orange chairs and the brown banquettes. And you know what? It was a relief.
So I'm invisible to building workers, to martini-swilling New York stockbrokers, to the anonymous attractive man on the street. Big deal. I miss the thighs I had at 26, but I'm not invisible to the man I love. And as for all the rest of them, the more invisible my body becomes, the more clearly people can see my brain. Hello, beautiful.
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