BECOMING INVISIBLE...and loving it

THE INVISIBILITY THAT SOCIETY CONFERS ON WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE CAN MAKE US FEEL USELESS AND IRRELEVANT - BUT IT CAN ALSO OPEN DOORS TO A WONDERFUL TIME OF UNIMPEDED SELF-DISCOVERY AND SELF-INDULGENCE.

- ESTHER CAINE

'Here, your wrinkles look like a spider web, Gran,' my eight-year-old granddaughter offers one day.

We're sitting on the garden swing together, and she's closely examining my 59-year-old face. She traces the spider web under my one eye with a forefinger, then taps the same small finger against my wattle that bit of loose skin under my chin that appeared apparently overnight about five years ago and giggles as it jiggles.

There was a time when this would have freaked me out completely. In a society that assigns little if any value to the elderly, and even less to women so much as approaching that demographic, we're constantly made to be acutely aware of our physical signs of ageing. And when we're no longer considered by men to be 'pretty' or 'sexy' or even (ugh) 'MILFs', we lose all value. Effectively, we become invisible.

There's actually a social phenomenon called 'invisible woman syndrome', referring to women in their mid-40s and older who simply disappear from public view in shops, on public transport, at work, on TV and in movies. Melanie Joosten, a researcher at Australia's National Ageing Research Institute and the author of A Long Time Coming: Essays on Old Age, points out, 'If [a woman starts] to no longer be attractive, which is what some people consider if a woman ages, then she becomes less relevant. For some women it's not a problem, and for others it's quite difficult, particularly if they've always been someone who's... felt they were noticed.' In my youth, I was certainly someone who'd always felt noticed.

I may not be one of the world's great beauties, but I was a tall, lithe, pretty youngster and an attractive adult woman.