How Brave

 

Recently, I read or heard this line somewhere: Erase your lines, erase your life.

Ageism, as we who are aging (but aren't we all really?) know, is alive and well. If women show their lines, wrinkles, and aging bodies, people either turn away or say, “How brave”. Why do we consider them brave? Because they’re daring to be vulnerable in the face of what will surely be judgment?

The other day, I watched the movie, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande in which the fabulous Emma Thompson plays a widow who has led a very predictable, boring and uneventful life. Wanting to break out of it and do something daring, she rents a hotel suite and hires a young, male sex worker. Aside from discovering her sexuality at this third act in her life, the two have in-depth and revealing conversations about family relationships and expectations. Spoiler alert, they don’t fall in love and ride off into the sunset. That would be a bit far-fetched and would defeat, I think, the central theme of the movie, which is not happy-ever-after but explores aging, intimacy, pleasure and the boxes we put ourselves in.

In one scene, the 63-year-old Emma Thompson stands nude in front of the mirror, finally really looking at herself. There’s no attempt to conceal the reality of a woman’s aging body, no discreetly placed veil or stand-in of someone younger. There, in the mirror she faces what hundreds of thousands of women face every day – the body of a real woman.

When I was relating this scene to a friend, she said, “How brave of her.”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines brave as:

‘having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty; having or showing courage’

When I’ve gone on solo trips, people have said the same thing to me, “How brave of you.” I have not considered it bravery, merely a curious and adventurous spirit, and, honestly, a bit self-indulgent. Because I can travel, I do.

For Emma Thompson to be in a nude scene at an age when society balks at considering women as sexual beings, is that brave? Courageous, yes certainly. I think soldiers and firefighters who rush into burning buildings are brave. Thompson was certainly courageous to bare all and open herself up to ridicule or derogatory comments. And isn’t it sad that that is the case? That it is a rare occasion that an older woman will allow herself to be fully seen in a world that will undoubtedly judge her harshly for it. Because she is a talented actor, Thompson can and did pull it off.

The rest of us may not be so fortunate in our everyday attempts at confronting ageism. We may look in the mirror and struggle to reconcile who we are inside with who the culture tells us we now are.