It's getting cool. Are you thinking about fall fashion?
Recently, I read a quote by the model actress Isabella Rossellini in response to the cover of this year's September Vogue, she said:
"Being one of the oldest models, I am still in search of a visual model for people my age. Not a "still beautiful" example. Not looking back but forward…something to thrive for, to desire. What comes to mind are images of Georgia O'Keefe as an old lady. I would love to have the elegance of this lady!"
Isabella's words resonate. I have been saying the same as I crest into middle age and watch my peers begin embalming their appearance. (Full disclosure: I've had Botox too!) I have a text thread going on with a dear one. Between memes that have us rolling it entails the search for images of real women who are beautiful in their older age. I'm sure we've all seen photos of white women with airbrushed and perfectly toned skin and white hair, leaving the only tell of age being white hair. A good friend and also famous supermodel had white hair in her twenties, and had she not been dying it, we would have all thought Sports Illustrated was showing us 60-year-olds in bikinis (don't worry, no one shows us that, that being older woman's bodies, sacrilegious)!
As a freshman in high school, I'd tear through the sheets of the heavy September Vogue with the supermodels from this year's cover: Christy, Linda, Naomi, Cindy. They wore Marc Jacob plaids, boxer shorts, torn dresses, silky slips, and combat boots. I remember watching our Indie-youth-grunge-anti-heroine culture sweep through the mainstream (heroin and anti-heroine were sadly combined then too, uggh).
In my twenties, I entered the fashion industry, starry-eyed and naive. I felt the dissonance of being the age of the models wearing Chanel, Helmut Lang, Versace, etc., but knowing that no one my age really wore those clothes because they were worn and afforded by older women. I thought it strange that older women were looking at young women as their models and younger women were dressed as older women.
In studying and researching ancient Greek and Roman culture, I discover significance rooted in the origins of our language that have been buried in time. However, I often run into conundrums. I realize the confusion is due to visiting the past through the cultural lens of now, as a 21c. woman, and bringing a bias to my meaning-making based on today's norms.
An example can be seen in my newsletter last week. I mention that the word familiar is rooted in familia, the family. But as I dove into the meaning of family, I learned that Roman and Greek use of the term Famila did not signify the same thing as we understand family now. Familia meant the "belongings of the home," including servants and slaves, and Domus would indicate wife and child, and Domo would be home. This explanation is an example of hiding an oppressive history because the truth is that Greek and Roman wives were the property of their husbands and were sold by their fathers into marriage with their husbands. Wives were kept in the home, the Domo, hence the feminine word.
As I learn more, I am beginning to see the truth of the Phallacrocy that our Western culture sprung from and the continued misogynistic undercurrents that lie invisible but remain potent in our language and artifacts. One of these is the visual representation of the model woman.
Did you know that in 2008, a small female figurine carved out of a mammoth tusk was found in Germany, known as Venus of Hohle Fels. She is older than Venus of Willendorf by 10,000 years and older than Venus of Dolní Věstonice by between 5,000-10,000 making her the oldest piece of human-made art object found to date, at 35,000-40,000 years ago. This small, round, soft, aged woman's body is speculated to be an idol, possibly representing a goddess, and maybe an ornament worn around the neck.
When reading about her in Wikipedia, there are quotes in the Interpretation section that are worth noting:
"Anthropologist Paul Mellars of Cambridge University has suggested that—by modern standards—the figurine "could be seen as bordering on the pornographic." [11]
Anthropologists from Victoria University of Wellington have suggested that such figurines were not depictions of beauty but represented "hope for survival and longevity, within well-nourished and reproductively successful communities,""
These male experts suggest that this sacred, round, soft, older woman with exposed genitalia was not a depiction of beauty but rather an emblem of successful reproduction and could be considered pornographic.
Dear reader, how does reading this explanation make you feel? Do we still agree with these degrading opinions as simply expert facts?
Here are some facts:
Women have not been the creators of our models.
The Western female ideal image was crafted by men.
Our museums, our libraries, our films, our magazines hold the fantasies of men.
We were born under the spell of Phallacracy, believing men's ideas to be correct and ourselves wrong.
The role of womanhood never fits because it was never designed to fit what we are. It was designed to fit the desire of a man.
Last week, I discussed objects and empowerment. I have determined to make myself a small female figurine similar in size and shape to the one from 35,000-40,000 years ago. I am doing it as remembrance, to remember a lost part of ourselves that loves and honors the beauty of an aged woman in her majestic fullness. A woman deserving of reverence. A role model to be held close. She will be my model as she was for our ancient ancestors.
I disagree with Isabella when she says she wants to look forward to find a new model for an older woman versus looking back. I think we need to look back to our human origins where we discover the “Greatest of All Time”. Our oldest models of power and grace are found carved in stone and bone of the older woman.
**Footnote: We should not name these figures Venus as they predate Venus and are not from Roman culture.