Growing old: The unbearable lightness of ageing | Jane Caro | TEDxSouthBank

I am growing old not older we're all doing that from the moment we are born I am growing old I am entering my third age do not patronize me by calling me middle-aged I've given you my age I am highly unlikely actually I haven't yet I didn't click the click up yes there are different downsides to aging um I am NOT going to live to be a hundred and fifteen so I am growing old I am past middle age I'm Way past middle age so what I have found that getting older like every other stage in my life brings with it gifts things I hadn't expected that are just fantastic here is the first let me tell you if you are the unfortunate possessor a pair of tits they hurt for most of your life from your age of 10 when you first start start getting breaths am i right ladies in the audience there's that agony when you first hit your poor little nipples on the desk at school and you think what the hell is going on well it gets worse then they heard for most of puberty as they get to their natural or unnatural size then usually mama and unnatural size given my height was a bit weird and then you've got the premenstrual changes that happen every goddamn month for about two weeks of every month you understand why female joggers with tits to a look at this pregnancy they just hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and breastfeeding they hurt particularly when babies get teeth all of the time they hurt until menopause and then magically you can go over the biggest potholes in a really badly sprung car without wincing always this was something I didn't know what happened and I am so incredibly grateful for I am also incredibly grateful for this on what level could this be seen as any kind of a disadvantage have you any idea how much headspace it clears up not to have to worry about your goddamn period every month every 28 days I mean you just take it in your stride women are incredible you most the time nobody else knows you've got the damn thing except when you do that thing of having the funny hand when you walk to the toilet no funny hand no asking your girlfriend am i looking can you see anything is that alright white trousers every day the week every other man liberation has get much more liberating than white trousers everyday them are I can't get pregnant Oh for most of my sexually active life and thank you Bella does still continue um but most of my sexually active life when I was fertile and got periods I spent most of my time worrying about getting pregnant then for about five years I spent most of my time worrying about not getting pregnant because I wanted to get pregnant it is so ridiculous when I didn't want to get pregnant it felt incredibly easy to do when I did want to get pregnant nothing seemed harder and the fear about contraception failing because this myth that it doesn't is a myth is white-knuckle I don't believe there's a woman in the audience that hasn't gone to the toilet when her period was due and looked desperately in the bowl for the tell-tale mark that said she got away with it again I am free of the male guys sorry guys I know you thought that looking at my tits was the biggest compliment you could pay me but actually I never ever wanted to I was tempted occasionally to do this I'm up here and it wasn't very high up given how tall I am ah but know that their gaze stayed there's a lovely story by Dale spender one of the Australia's greatest feminists there was a meeting she'd go to and there was a man who said opposite to her in this meeting was a regular meeting and he'd always stare at her tits as he talked to her in one day she just he asked her question and she just refused to answer said nothing and he repeated the question and she went wake up wake up he's talking to you now people listen to what I have to say what is wrong with that nothing it's fantastic I am free of the female gaze I don't care what you think about me anymore as my skin has become saggy Bhagya stretched a bit in unfortunate places but I don't care what you think of me remember I have grown more comfortable in it I am much more able to be myself than I ever was when I was in that awful competitive thing where you look at everybody in the room and you think I pretty in her or not quite as pretty or am i ugly am I the fattest woman in the room that's always the worst question to ask yourself now I often am so what I'll have another another serve of anything fattening and I'm a glass of wine going pass thanks I'll take that one because who cares no one's looking at me anymore so I can be 100% myself how wonderful is that look they're lovely yeah no they are you do love them along with them mayor Friedman and Lisa Pryor recently I and those two wonderful women have been designated the worst mothers in Australia by Mark Latham and of course he is the final judge of those things apparently um and this is because I am open about the fact that whilst I'm really proud that I was a mother I'm really pleased that I've done I learned so much from mothering I learned my kids taught me far more than I've ever taught them but I'm over it it's very hard work you know and it's often very boring work um the number of times they say and do something that actually gives you pleasure is fairly rare in comparison to the number of times you're doing things you never ever thought you would um and some of them are quite disgusting but that's okay they're 23 they're 26 I've done what I can now it's up to them love them dearly will help if they need it very much hope they don't need it I am a member of the first generation of women this was referred to earlier by the wonderful circus of women who have worked for most of their lives women over 50 notices in the United States but I'm sure it's you know you could extrapolate down for Australia control 19 trillion dollars we have become a market and that is a power that makes us no longer as invisible as perhaps we once were we are in fact the healthiest wealthiest most active women in history in the west of course I'm talking about fantastic you know what's better those kids have moved out there running their own money you earn stuff you know who you sent spend it on yourself I haven't got grandchildren yet I am looking forward to it mainly because my friends who are grandparents say you know what they're lovely but you can hand them back um but I'm not gonna spend all my money on my grandchildren that would be spoiling them we need to build their character but I've got enough character so I can spoil myself and I am yet and this is my question why does the world want me to hate and deny this stage of my life why am I expected to spend that money that I've spent a lifetime earning I'm trying to fight aging why would I want to pretend that I am NOT my age I have earned every bit of my age I am proud of it I see nothing wrong with being 57 and a half it's very important that half you go back to being a five year old not just in the fact that your tits don't hurt I am expected by many to at least consider risking my life having cosmetic surgery to chase some sort of fantasy idea of looking perpetually young the trouble with people that I have seen who have had cosmetic surgery is they don't look young and they don't look particularly pretty they tend to a look after a while like this strangely related to one another you know and the major message you get from it anyone who's had a lot of plastic surgery is you're you're rich and insecure which is a sad message to be sending at this point in your life when in fact the loss of your physical beauty teaches you how to become much more aware of the other beauties that you have that's what that loss does it enables you to start to understand so much more what else you have to offer so why would you want to hang on to the thing that blocked you from getting to that or at least getting other people to understand that and imagine how embarrassing frankly it would be at your funeral for them to say well Jane died of a tummy tuck I mean your kids would be quite into it all to get pretty shitty with you for dying for something like that you know I don't like that I've got this really I don't but I'm not going to get rid of it there's a couple of reasons why well first of all I don't want to die I don't like pain I'm not nearly so interested in looking good as I am in feeling good but also I think I inherited this this is genetic somewhere in my past there is an ancestor who had this and this is a little piece of that person that I'm carrying around with me I liked that idea I'm going to embrace it I'm expected to want to inject my face with toxins so I can start to look a bit like Tony Abbott or shiny and spinach can't see the attraction in that I don't know why ah and this is the most interesting one when I say something controversial or provocative on Twitter now it really happens but when I do the insults that are thrown at me the instances are thrown at my younger feminist friends are often about how they want to rape them and do horrible things to them sexually I don't get that what I get is you're a bitter twisted old ugly hag hey you know the young ones are still juicy enough to fantasize about but the old ones now but I've even imagined it I'm supposed to be offended by that are you kidding me why would I don't understand that I am not hurt when you call me old it is a statement of fact it is a statement of fact and that is fine by me I want to see how my face is meant to turn out I really am I'm interested it won't be pretty but it will be real and I'd rather look real like my real self then I don't know some sort of fantasy version have you seen people like Jane Fonda and Goldie Hawn and meg Ryan well Renee Zellweger was the latest one wasn't she you think is that someone is that a Renee Zellweger impersonator and that's what tends to happen you don't look like you anymore why would you want to get further away from your face instead of more comfortable in it aging is a valid stage in a whole life it has things to teach us about letting go of things like vanity like what other people think of us like approval like life because when you get older it concentrates the mind you realize how much shorter the time is that you have left and that is wonderfully energizing that makes you move like nothing else I believe that contrary to conventional wisdom aging is easier on women than it is on men first of these is yes as I get older I get more aches and pains but can I tell you for the first time ever they are equal-opportunity aches and pains man get bad knees lousy backs ah what have I got I've got a um Morton's article neuroma all don't ask me what it is is very very unpleasant but then get them to I'm sorry to be mean about it but after all those decades that sort its periods etc etc etc it's a pleasure when my husband said my back hurts I say oh really how sad but there's more to it than that I'm seeing a lot of my male peers who are very powerful in their life controlled businesses were very successful they were from that group which are considered in by the world to automatically have merit which many of the rest of us are not automatically assumed to have but this group are there the white male often privately school educated men and well of course they're male and men that group are what centers the norm they're allowed to be individuals if they do something wrong it's that individual has done it wrong you know you're in a kind of minority group or a subordinate group when when you do something wrong see women can't cut it it's used as an example for the whole group women drivers for example why does no one ever say men drivers it is a term you never hear so men find as they get older I'm seeing this in my peers that they suddenly go for the first time ever in their lives but if I've been in that powerful group to being a member of one of those groups they go from being a man or their individual selves to being an old man and it hits them like a ton of bricks but for women it's much easier because we're really used to being irrelevant and a member of a group that no one paid much attention to all our life so we're not remotely concerned about being old women because it's not much different from being women really notice with the drivers it's an old driver is another way of identifying that they've become a member of a group which means lost status the human female if you think getting old is a bad thing for women the human female can live three maybe more decades beyond her reproductive capacity no other creature on the planet comes close we are unique in the entire history of evolution in that female human beings can live so much beyond their reproductive life this is extraordinary we should be celebrating it you are unique this is our time and Apollo said it brilliantly stop whining about getting old it's a privilege a lot of people who I did wish they were still alive finally feminism puts women at the center of their own lives and that's what getting old does to all that stuff about your body no longer being captive to the reproductive cycle you no longer being captive to anybody else's gaze an opinion that's what feminism is about it's about women putting themselves at the center of their own lives you only have limited time to make to do this so make the most of it don't waste your time getting injections and having surgery and lamenting the the loss of your youth and your beauty who gives a it was pretty ordinary really if you think about it it is literally your last chance to be exactly who you are and to find out who that is when you're stripped of all that cosmetic stuff that you present to the rest of the world you're old no one's interested but you bloody Allah and that is fantastic please whatever you do don't waste it before I get off the stage I just want to say one thing I'd like to dedicate this talk to my friend Jeff Truman who died very suddenly aged 57 last Sunday he made me think very hard about this talk and how important it is to know the only moment you've got is right now and to get old jeez you're lucky if you do thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 206,906

Rating: 4.7128549 out of 5

Keywords: Aging, Life, Australia, tedx talk, English, ted, ted talk, tedx, TEDxTalks, ted x, ted talks, tedx talks

Id: ULqf3OyemZY

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 09 2015