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Pre-Crone
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I remember hearing the actress Cybil Shepherd talk about aging women & their roles or lack of roles in today’s society. She coined the term “pre-crone” and I always liked the way that sounded. Well, I liked it until it applied to me. Pre-crone is like the gasp before the last gasp. I am 56 and clinging to my pre-crone status. I am not a maiden. I am a mother but since the children are grown and out of the nest I don’t think that counts. But I don’t want to be a crone yet.
The word crone should bring to mind wisdom, worth, laugh lines, and so on but instead I think of a “shoot if you must this old grey head” sort of image. A little old lady, wearing “sensible” shoes, clutching her shawl and boasting grey, blue or lavender & in my grandmother’s case, pink hair. (She had been a redhead when she was young & I guess pink seemed like the next best thing). I don’t understand why as men age they become distinguished and get called names like “silver fox” but women just get to be “wrinklies” & “sweet old things”. Even very old men like George Allen, who lived to be 100, can be cute but a woman the same age is just an old woman. An older man can trade in his current wife for a younger model but if a woman goes after a younger man she is a cougar. What an unflattering term. It sounds so predatory.
The odd thing is that I know a lot of women much older than I am and they do not have blue or pink hair or clutch their shawls. They are bright, energetic women wearing snappy sneakers and cute clothes. They walk, play bridge, do volunteer work, entertain and have lots of friends. So where did I get my mental stereotype? What I think is that life flies by so quickly that by the time you reach what in your head feels like the best years of your life, you are actually old and can see the end of those years and the end is nearer than the beginning. And that is scary.
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