I'm driving home from the school run listening to Chris Evans on Radio Two when an interview with Roger Daltrey of The Who comes on. Roger has just recorded a new album and a new song has 'dropped' (this means his single has just been released for those the same age and older than me) which was then played. His powerful vocals and the music carry with it an unmistakable and inspiring energy.
The man is seventy-four years old.
Then, as your mind wanders when you're driving, I thought about the Netflix series I'm currently watching for the second time: Grace & Frankie staring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. Jane is eighty and Lily is seventy-eight. Both women have found themselves single in their seventies after their husbands left them (for each other). The series focuses on their friendship and rediscovering their place in the world after they've both had forty-year marriages and children.
And now I'm home and writing this I'm thinking about the films I've enjoyed in recent years. Something's Gotta Give with Diane Keaton, a successful writer, and Jack Nicholson, a businessman and serial dater of the younger woman. The story is about their love affair as Jack realises a more mature woman is the one for him.
Then there's It's Complicated staring Meryl Streep as a divorcée and owner of a coffee and cake restaurant who has an affair with her ex-husband. I think about The Intern starring Robert de Niro as an intern at a young start up (and yes, I'm well aware I've just mentioned three movies by Nancy Meyers). In Julie & Julia, another of my favourite films, the storyline I enjoyed most was Julia Child's. The more mature woman.
And in fiction I love Miss Marple. An old, nosy, spinster.
As I was driving and listening to Roger Daltrey deftly demonstrating age was but just a number, I was reminded of a blog post I've been thinking about writing for so long. A blog post about age and blogging.
I'm not quite clear on all my thoughts so, as is the way I work, I'm writing them down in a blog post to try and make sense of them. And the sentence that keeps coming to me is: Is there (unintentional) ageism in blogging?
Now, I'm not in my seventies. I'm in my very early forties. And I've been blogging since my late twenties. I've been here for some time.
In this time I've learned a lot about writing online from women (and a few men) younger than me. I was even mentored by two women, one of whom was well over a decade younger than me. I wouldn't be here now without these two younger women. I'm constantly inspired by the way women in their twenties and thirties have grasped the online world and really forged ahead with online careers. And I've written before about how Zoella inspires me (she's currently in her late twenties).
So this in no way is a gripe about younger women or millennials at all.
But I would love to see some more mature voices writing and filming online. I know there are some, but I feel we/they are drowned out by those in their twenties. I flicked through a copy of Blogosphere magazine a week or so ago and most (not all) but most of the interviews or profiles were with people in their twenties or early thirties.
Where are the people in their forties, fifties or sixties and above?
For such a new industry that's breaking all sorts of barriers in so many ways, it saddens me a little that the more mature woman isn't represented. It's like Hollywood and TV all over again where, as Goldie Hawn says in the movie, The First Wives Club:
““There are only three ages for women in Hollywood; “Babe”, “District Attorney”, and “Driving Ms. Daisy.”
Goldie Hawn, The First Wives Club”
In blogging we have the really young women, possibly into beauty and fashion. Then we have the career woman forging a fantastic online career. Then we have the parenting women; the new mums.
But then what? What comes after that? Where are all the 'mature' women - perhaps they've older children, perhaps not - who are forging an online career? Have we fallen off a cliff?
Where are the Grace and Frankies? The Meryl Streeps, the Goldie Hawns and Diane Keatons?
They have to be out there. I know they are.
Edit: I've had so many interesting responses to this blog post on twitter. My follow up posts are Age & Blogging and Why Aren't Over-40 Bloggers as Visible Online?
