100th Post: "Older Well-Off Women"

Well, the topic of ageism has generated a lot of controversy. Various folks feel it’s inappropriate to say ageism towards the old is more pernicious and problematic than that towards the young. And while I disagree with that, I do agree that young people battle stereotypes and restrictions of their own.

I have to admit: sometimes, in these kinds of conversations, I feel like a mom. Someone the kids have decided is hopelessly out of it, doesn't know what it is to struggle, out of touch with their issues, and provincial in my outlook, which they feel lacks a progressive openness to different cultures and understanding of intersectionality. Of course I’m not speaking for anyone else here – it’s just how I feel.

And it’s kind of familiar, because I used to think some of these things about my mom. She just didn’t get it. Although in a different way from the example here, as my mom’s perceived disconnects didn’t have to do with lack of progressiveness or excess money.

And when I see discussion in many publications of older, professional women who do “x” – whether “x” is support Hillary Clinton, or care about equal pay or childcare, or whatever, and assumptions about their lives and values, it sounds familiar.

Clarifying a few things. I fully understand and agree with anyone who disputes issues like equal pay and glass ceilings being the only things feminism is all about. I support critiques of the movement as not being adequately intersectional. The kind of feminist activity I get most passionate about, and which I plan to do full-time upon (hopefully early) retirement, deals with educational and career access issues for low-income girls and women, and helping to create leverage specifically for those without certain kinds of privilege. Critiques dealing with prioritization of those least in need of help are, IMO, totally legit.

And while I mention this stereotype in the context of HRC supporters, of which I am one, this is not to say that mature, pragmatic people cannot support BHO. I mention the HRC supporter concept because this is the context in which the “older professional woman” theme often comes up.

Anyway. Looking at older, well-off women (“OWW”) as foreign creatures – moms, or well-off friends’ moms… sometimes, I want to say: how do you know that won’t be you? Why are you so sure these people have no relationship to you or your interests? You really never know. And you really don’t know if, in becoming… that… you’d lose your humanity, perspective, values.

I don’t see this kind of distrust of older professional men on the part of young progressive men, both white or MOC, I know. Granted, this is anecdotal. Thinking about boys I speak to in poor school districts – there’s less of a sense that older professional guys are necessarily corrupt or foreign.

She didn’t care about equal pay twenty years ago:. But it’s good for all women that she has the platform she has now. (h/t Apostate).

It’s good for all women that she has the platform she has now, and in all of our interest that she conquer the glass ceiling as it is specifically configured for WOC, more about that here and here.

She was not an OWW forty years ago. It’s good for all women that she is now.

This older professional woman, who died 30 years ago at 80, was born to a poor carpenter who frequently boarded up the front door in response to rumors of an imminent pogrom. Five of her siblings died in childhood. While many think Thatcher issued in the “Iron Lady” epithet, it was really this foreign woman who did. It was good for all women that she became one of only three women in the world to hold the office she held. She signed her country’s declaration of independence, the day before her country was attacked and she was called to respond and trusted to do so. This was good for all women (of course, the attack itself was not). As foreign minister, she promoted ties with African states to establish relationships with the international community and shared her experience in learning how to reclaim land from foreign rule. This was good for all women.

I do not compare myself to these women. But ten years ago, I was $120,000 in debt. I would not have been described as a successful professional woman – especially since I was unemployed, shortly to be self-employed as a stripper. I and other members of my family did not have health care. I lived in a small studio apartment. I had infinitely more privilege than many, but was not anyone’s idea of what you’d look up privilege or professional (in the societally positive way anyway) in the encyclopedia and expect to find.

Now, I probably am. But was this a natural mechanism? A preordained time when I would push a button that said “PRIVILEGE – press 1 for debt relief up to $120K. press 2 for retroactive substitution of parents who didn’t think investment and property ownership were bourgeois compared to the charms of classy academic poverty.” No, it was more of combination of: a low tolerance for frustration; a desire to rebel from the family path; burnout with the classy grad school careers I had been pursuing; an unwillingness (laziness, I’ll cop to that) to work as hard as other law grads were willing to do; an inability to focus in a structured environment; a realization that the way I wanted to make a living was to disconnect hours from dollars, and find something where I could make money on a deal-percentage basis; a willingness to take some risks in funding this, and the privilege of having the physical and problem-solving wherewithal to implement this.

But if you’d asked me 20 years ago if I’d ever pursue a sales job where two most successful people in California doing it didn’t have fancy education, came from working class backgrounds, no grad degrees – meaning that’s all that’s required to do well at this, but you can do REALLY well – I’d have said no fucking way. Why would I waste my education? Why would I be in sales? And wasn’t it kind of unclassy, unbefitting my background, to be making a lot of money? I’d turn into THEM. Nope.

So what’s the goal here, an argument for why OWW should be considered an oppressed class? Hell no!

But instead, a caution that the OWW is a tricky phenomenon. She might be Margaret Thatcher. But she could be your mom, after she takes up real estate as a second career. She could be your “I’ll never sell out!” women’s studies professor who hits it big with her first book.

She could be you.

And so she might not be all that irrelevant. Just because she cares about equal pay and glass ceilings does mean she doesn’t care about her her or her or this project. She might look like one thing thing during the work week and another on her off hours.

By dismissing the possibility that we could be OWWs, because we’ve empaneled the jury, tried the case, and gotten the verdict, we’re not hurting the OWWs. They’ll be just fine. They don’t need the reassurance of their relevance. And we’re certainly not hurting the OWM. But we’re hurting ourselves. We’re denying ourselves something men take for granted, and the equal platform that goes along with that. And we’re denying ourselves the opportunity to see whether being an OWW is indeed inconsistent with our values.

Sixty years ago, she didn’t know she would be a career mom with a big salary in the 50s, a newspaper editor in the 60s, a prizewinning author with mainstream success in the 70s. Also in the 70s and 80s, she wrote for Hollywood and produced on Broadway, spoke and taught at top universities. In the 90s she would appear in motion pictures, host a weekly radio talk show. Currently she charges $43,000 per speaking engagement (which typically sell out). She celebrated her 80th birthday at a Hollywood-thrown event at Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Club. Nobody of good conscience would claim she sold out, or that her success doesn’t matter.

In 2008 she became one of the “older professional women” supporting Hillary Clinton.