Beauty Betrays Us
Susan Johnson - photo by Simon Schluter
How we feel about the ageing process is rarely the hot topic shared spontaneously over coffee. It’s a bit like broaching the subject of sex
at a dinner party 60 years ago. Absolutely taboo. However, I found this insightful passage by author Susan Johnson in On Beauty, one of the “Little Books on Big Themes’’ published by Melbourne University Pressin 2009, which captures her thoughts on ageing.
“Now of course I have grown old, or at least beyond the moment when a woman’s beauty is supposed to matter. I have arrived at the precipice, between middle age and old age, not yet one of Helen Garner’s women in The Spare Room, women in their sixties who have learnt to avert their eyes from their own reflections.
Rather, I am at that moment when I am compulsively drawn to mirrors, to watch age break across the surface of my face. I am 52 years old and the face I have had all my adult life is leaving, moment by moment. The disintegration of my features is both fascinating and terrifying and for the first time I can see that ageing is like something breaking up, like watching a well-known object crack into a million pieces before your eyes.’’
Susan Johnson has written six novels and a memoir. She lives in London where she is working on a seventh novel, My Hundred Lovers.
age & aphrodite, my journal | nadine 03/12/2010
2 Comments to “Beauty Betrays Us”
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By Marie Jonsson-Harrison, 13/12/2010 @ 7:03 pm
I read this article late at night (bad move) then went to bed with a feeling of unease as I too am of a similar age. I try not to think about it too much and am happy that at long last, at least in the media the older woman has been celebrated more recently, look at Helen Mirren.
This quote is also a good one to remember by Katherine Mansfield (writer)
“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only for wallowing in.”
By nadine williams, 16/12/2010 @ 11:24 pm
Darling Marie, thankyou for this comment. It is a valuable insight that other women feel the way I have felt over the past few years – and of course, one never talks about it. Not good dinner party conversation. lol. Nadine