Why do some older women make themselves look like men? As we ladies age and hormones dry up, there is a tendency to develop more masculine traits. In fact, unlike puberty where we are all told exactly what changes our bodies will go through, nobody tells you about the horrible changes that happen post-menopause. Once these changes happen, you can go one of three ways. You can either fight it and assert your femininity publicly, wearing attractive colours and styles which make the most of your changing shape. You can give into it, dress in beige or black, don fluffy jogging pants and baggy pullovers, get a short-back-and-sides and throw the make-up bag in the bin. Or you can drag yourself kicking and screaming back to your twenties, wearing too-short-skirts, droopy breasts hanging over the top, wear extreme make-up and totter around on dangerously high heels.
My preference is for the first solution. I love being a woman and still enjoy dressing up, applying make-up (just enough to enhance, not plaster!) and making the most of what I was given. I won’t leave the house unless my hair looks decent. The third solution is just laughable and often characterised on soap operas as the ‘tarty’ older lady making a play for the younger men.
But it is the second solution that makes me whinge most. Androgenous Woman is terrible. You will have seen her around and about. She’s the one you have to look twice at to make sure she is a woman or a man. Can you see any suspicion of breasts lurking under that sweater? Has she got stubble? Any other clues? Painted fingernails? A spritz of perfume? Sadly, nothing really tells you whether she is really a woman. I don’t understand why women do this to themselves. I wonder what their ‘significant other’ and family think about the way they look? Does nobody ever tactfully suggest they might make a bit more of an effort to celebrate their womanliness?
Clearly not.
Lynda's Blog 