Further aging
Further to the aging theme, I was watching a BBC Lord Peter Wimsey mystery from 1973 and there was a party scene and do you know, everyone at the party was over forty. And they were all having fun! Looking pretty! Chatting and flirting and drinking champagne.
Then this popped up over my Gmail:
Pablo Picasso - "It takes a long time to become young."
Well, yes, Pablo, as it happens, I agree. But something happened between the early seventies and now, or between the 1920s and now, depending on how you look at it -- the triumph of youth culture. The pressure on us to remain young despite the natural, and in some ways, welcome process of aging, maturing, growing up, is immense. Lord Peter Wimsey today would at the very most be a lusciously ripe thirty something, not a greying man in his late forties or early fifties. It's a shame.
Except for a few aches, you couldn't pay me to be twenty again. But I would like there to be a space in the world for fun, glamour, romance, high-jinks and long parties for those of us leaving all vestiges of youth behind. The space that there is, is shrinking. And it is time to resurrect it.
Last year I was both mother and motherless.
Then this popped up over my Gmail:
Pablo Picasso - "It takes a long time to become young."
Well, yes, Pablo, as it happens, I agree. But something happened between the early seventies and now, or between the 1920s and now, depending on how you look at it -- the triumph of youth culture. The pressure on us to remain young despite the natural, and in some ways, welcome process of aging, maturing, growing up, is immense. Lord Peter Wimsey today would at the very most be a lusciously ripe thirty something, not a greying man in his late forties or early fifties. It's a shame.
Except for a few aches, you couldn't pay me to be twenty again. But I would like there to be a space in the world for fun, glamour, romance, high-jinks and long parties for those of us leaving all vestiges of youth behind. The space that there is, is shrinking. And it is time to resurrect it.
Last year I was both mother and motherless.
posted by Francesca Amendolia at 13:24
2 Comments:
Oooh - I used to watch EVERY SINGLE Lord Peter Wimsey mystery religiously. And I was in grade school. What's up with that?
I completely agree with your main point. And I love those old films/shows. Still, I must point out that even if the male hero and supporting characters are middle-aged, the female hero (i.e. love interest) is rarely long past her early twenties. Even Harriet Vane was probably just approaching thirty.
I guess that was what was so startling and interesting (to women anyway) about the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair with Rene Russo. Gorgeous, zesty, female heroine well over thirty!
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