Back in 2007 most of my friends were incensed by the documental “beperkt houdbaar”. The title should translate to “limited shelf life”, as products in the supermarket have; it is a reference to the idea that women have such date too, that they expire and stop being atractive. This documental is a fairly powerful criticism to the rat race that many women encounter themselves in, trying not to age to stay atractive. It showed, in a fairly shocking way, disgusting sides of the the plastic surgery industry, busy with absurd things as the reshaping of vaginal lips. Needles to say, it is a dutch documental.
I actually never got to like it. Obviously I have always agreed with the criticism, but it seemed wrongly carried, or posed, or made. Now and then, like once in a year, I get to talk about it with my wife, who still is an ardent supporter of it, and I never manage to clearly understand what’s my problem with it. I just don’t like it, I guess. But last time we talked about it, few hours ago, I figured it out.
Past week another tragedy happened in Venezuela. A fairly well known writer, in my opinion with a purposely build and rather artificial image of enfant terrible, was accused of statutory rape by the victim, publicly. As in such cases frequently occur, other women came out, adding evidence for the existence of a pattern rather than to an isolated case. Now, differently than in most of this cases, the writer in question killed himself few days later.
So indeed it has been in my mind, at least in the past few days, the Lolita thing, that relation between aged men and young, frequently underaged women. And of course, that documental. In it is never explicitly said, but the running assumption is that women need to stay attractive due to the pressure from their potential partners. The gender asymmetry of the pressure is certainly exposed: men need not to do plastic surgery. So it got to be that older men only like younger women, right? and so, elder women have to rejuvenate themselves, to extend their shelf life, to stay in the race.
But then, thinking about those disgusting persons, the elder writer (or professor, or trainer, or manager) surrounded by an admiring court of younger women, it struck me. It has never been about their youth. It is about their admiration. It is not about how they look, it is about power and submission. It is not so that men like to “have” younger women for their looks. It is that men believe that they can “have” them! if at all, less unlikely than “having” a women of their same age. I never liked that figure, the elder man and the nubile admiring woman. Like many others, I sort of assumed that what bothered me was the difference of age with the obvious consequence of the looks. Or perhaps I was simply jealous, why is she not busy with me, if I am her age!? But thinking about Willy McKey, reading what the woman involved wrote, I realize that what has always repulsed me, and probably what repulsed all of us that are repulsed, is not the “nubile” part of it. Is the “admiring” part. The asymmetry of power.
So no, ladies. Now I know why I disliked that documental. Because it is not about your aging. It never was. You never stop being attractive. Your are so hot when old as hot you were when young. Perhaps more, perhaps less. It does not matter at all. It is about us, us the insecure male, the ones with the fragile ego, the ones that need admiration. It is not even our body that age, is our pride.
It isn’t your age and your looks. It is our fear.