The Power of Invisibility

Overheard in the locker room this morning:

Woman 1: "I just can't stand the sort of clothes women our age are supposed to wear."
Woman 2: "So don't buy them. I refuse to. Who says we should be matronly and wear dull clothes. Screw that."
Woman 3: "It's true. Vote with your dollar. "
Woman 1: "I've been listening to this tape from the library that's really been helping me with this adjustment. It's all just a package."
Woman 2: "What do you mean by that? Package?"
Woman 1: "This outer shell. Our bodies. It's what's inside that really matters. It's just that.. at this age.."
Woman 3: "..I feel like people judge by the outside."
Woman 1: "Yeah. Exactly."
Woman 3: "I get so depressed in the Spring."
Woman 1: "You should listen to this tape. It'd really help you. It makes me feel..."
Woman 2: "It's growing old in this culture that's all wrong."
Woman 1: "Yeah. It's hard enough - but society tells us we can't grow old.."
Woman 2: "We should change that."
Woman 3: "Yeah, we can change that.."

The three women, although they didn't come out and use this exact word have been feeling INVISIBLE.

That people look right past them. That, despite their best efforts to age gracefully and keep fit ..and despite the fact that all three professed to nary a gray hair between them that they still see that society and the economy seem to be driven by the youth culture machine and shuns them. (I almost stepped in and asked: "I've been coloring over gray hair since age 28! How is it you've acheived 50 without ANY?" --but it was better that I didn't. I was the wrong age to barge into this conversation. )

As I left the locker room and was exiting the Y, a coworker cut in front of me to exit. I recognized him and smiled and motioned that he could go ahead. He didn't respond back. We ended up walking side by side down the stairs to the street and so I said something about a meeting we'd both been in the week before where we both asked the same question. He looked at me blankly. I repeated it - he looked again squinting his eyes and STILL no flicker of recognition.

I finally said: "You don't recognize me from [company name here] do you?"
He answered without hesitation or remorse: "Nope. I don't." I explained my earlier comment to him so he could understand why I'd brought it up. He nodded and tried to joke off his not knowing me by saying something glib. I laughed along and we parted ways as he went through the skyway and I went out to the street level to go to my parking ramp to stash my gym bag in the car.

Then I thought:
I've worked with this guy, in the same building, for about 4 years now. I recognized him on sight. He acted as if he'd never seen me before in his life.

I think I'm on the cusp of that age when women begin being invisible. I've had tastes of this in the past before - this invisibility. In fact, it's really gotten so that when the invisibility wears off for a moment and someone DOES see me, it's a surprise. An anomally. It even makes me feel uncomfortable on the rare occasions that it happens.

I don't wear bland boring clothes, at least not usually. I don't have a boring hair cut. I am just about average size and height and weight. So, I'm not remarkable necessarily. In many ways "blending in" or being invisible is a good thing. I just wonder if, by the time I'm 50, I won't despise my "packaging" just like the women in the locker room who are struggling with their own "packaging".

And this all brings me back to a memory from Japan.

I had one student, Shizue Sakaguchi, who didn't really want to learn English. In fact, she much preferred to hear me talk in English and ask me questions in Japanese. I held firm (after all she was paying a small fortune for private lessons) and made her speak English as much as possible. In halting English we exchanged many interesting stories. Shizue was in her late fifties when I first moved to Japan and turned 60 one day, 2 years into my time as her English teacher.
She had welcomed me especially kindly and so I'd been to her home for dinner, we'd shared her secrets of staying young (that's a LONG story for another day) and talked about every taboo subject: politics, religion and love. She didn't want "fluff" in her lessons. She was direct and mischeivious and had an excellent dry sense of humor. Every week we met for about an hour. Every week, once a week for 2 years I saw Shizue come from the Ramen shop that she and her husband owned near the train station. She'd lilt up the street on impossibly small and high heeled shoes for her afternoon English lesson.
She was a heavy smoker, so her voice was very deep and husky. She was also impossibly thin and petite. I'd guess about 4 feet 8 inches tall and MAYBE 85lbs soaking wet. Probably 5 of those pounds were her long black hair which she piled up in an ornate bun on her head each day. She once took her hair down to show me - and it was past her waist in lenth - almost to the back of her knees.

On the week of her 60th birthday Shizue was late for class. When she came in to the lobby of the school I could see her big wide eyes twinkling and she was already laughing at my surprise. She'd chopped off ALL her hair, into the shortest pixie cut I'd ever seen and she'd pierced her ears. She wore even younger looking fashionable clothes and PURPLE eyeshadow. Shizue had clearly looked forward to my reaction - although she'd been hearing plenty of exclamations from her family and friends, customers and coworkers already.

I was dumbstruck. When I asked her why, after all these years with long hair, she'd cut her hair she smiled coyly and said: "Oh, I don't know." But she must have kept the real answer close to her heart. She knew. And she probably knew a kid like me (I was all of 22 or 23 at that time) could probably never really understand.
She must have needed a change in a big way. To remind her of her wilder side. To look outwardly as daring and young as she felt on the inside. Shizue was definitely young and wild on the inside. And, for her 60th birthday, she decided to update her packaging to reflect how she felt on the inside.

Shizue lived life vibrantly and was never a wall flower. I hope those women in the locker room rail against the establishment like they claim they're going to. Go for it gals! I hope you change society's impression of aging before I grow any older. If any demographic group can - it'll be the baby boomers. I just hope it trickles down to our generation so I can reap the benefits, too. Otherwise, I'll take a page out of Shizue's book when I cease to enjoy invisibility any longer.