We cannot let others define aging for us.
….We must, as we have done before,
…………….redefine this stage for ourselves.
…
...Born after WW2, we fought to redefine womanhood at every stage.
We’re educated or we stitched together an education as we went. We have married, divorced and married again. Many of us are single. We have wined, dined and traveled. We read and we have an interest in the arts, philosophy, history, more. We are old enough to have experienced the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, possibly, more than once. And we have survived.
We’ve fought stereotypes at every age. Ditzy. Blonde. Bimbo. Frump. Fat. Frigid. Slut. Married. On the Shelf. Working Mother. Stay at home mother. Middle-aged. Bitch. Ball-breaker. Battle-axe. Desperado. Dithery. Grey-haired. Hag. Nag. Old bag. Crone. Little old lady. Aging is no romp in the park. But it is not a hollow, characterless cartoon sketch either.
We cannot let others define us. We must, as we have done before, define each stage in life for ourselves.
sibylesque 
This year (2014) I have participated in a number of tertiary student films and enjoyed myself and enjoyed watching them collaborating, apparently in a very adult fashion.
It is clear that old women (I am 73) are, to this group, either
1. sweet grandmotherly types
2. crabby bossy unreasonable crones
3. dying
We wryly see ourselves as the moving parts of the set – no agency at all.
Hello Belinda,
Good to hear from you even if your observations are a touch tragic for those of us in the senior category. As I said before, If You’d like to write, about your experiences with the younger demographic this time, please do. SEnd copy to the e-mail address above.
Cheers and Happy Christmas
Kerry Cue