http://www.verbotomy.com
There’s a celebrity slideshow on Yahoo today, titled “Celebs Rocking Bikinis Over 40″ that raises the age-old aging issue: what’s too old to wear a bikini? There are a whole genre of such questions that fascinate me because I can’t figure out what or if there’s any correct answer. Whenever I try, like Alice I end up tumbling down that famous hole in the ground. It goes like this:
Q: What’s too old to wear a bikini?
A: Isn’t that in the eye of the wearer? It’s a personal decision, kinda like birth control or, dare I say it, abortion.
(Yes, I just compared an older woman wearing a bikini to abortion rights)
Q: What about the eye of the beholder? Shouldn’t that count for something?
A: Close your eyes.
Q: That’s a facile response. Why don’t you look at why this whole “too old” injunction exists.
A: It’s really no different than all the proscriptions about how we should appear when we go out in public. As a culture, we like to regulate, to enforce visual boundaries. Sumptuary laws existed in Elizabethan times so that the common folk could never be mistaken, by virtue of their clothing, for the gentry. It’s a way of maintaining order in society.
Q: Whoa! Then you’re saying the “too old to wear a bikini” injunction exists to maintain order? How’s that work?
A: Wearing bikinis is not only the privilege of the young, it’s a mark or sign of youth and, yes, fertility. If we allow any old woman to wear a bikini, that erodes the worth of the sign. Erosion of the sign is frightening to people who count on signs to tell them when all is well with society. Consequently we need to find a way to ensure that older women don’t wear bikinis, since we can’t really make a law against it (or at least not yet in 21st century America, but wait, the fundamentalists are on their way). One way to do this is to shame them into compliance. The media are really good at policing this, which is why we regularly see the “too old to wear” stories in print and on-line.
Q: So what’s an older woman who wants to wear a bikini to do? Fall in line? Satisfy myself with a tankini?
A: Nah….wear the bikini. Flaunt the fact that you’re disobeying cultural mores. Consider it an act of political discourse.
