Being Invisible Is A Superpower–For Us.

By Karen and Erica

Invisible Woman Syndrome. It’s a real thing. Just when we reach the fullness of our womanhood, no-one can see us any more. There are many who think invisibility is a superpower. We would agree if we were the ones to decide when to don the cloak of invisibility.

How do women disappear? Maybe in the manner described by Akiko Busch, the author of How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency, in an article for The Atlantic.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 film, The Lady Vanishes, a young woman on a train becomes disturbed by the sudden disappearance of a kindly older woman, a governess and music teacher. The latter, a spinster, is introduced to the viewer when she writes the letters of her name in the condensation on one of the train’s glass windowpanes, only to have them evaporate almost instantly. Within minutes, she is gone, and the other passengers, steward, and conductor claim to have never seen her. Asked to describe her, the young woman can only say she was “middle-aged and ordinary,” before admitting, “I can’t remember.” Later in the film, the older woman is reduced to “a hallucination, a subjective image, a character in a novel subconsciously remembered,” and even “nothing but lumps of raw flesh,” all before she is revealed as a British spy, the movie’s ultimate heroine in the final scene.

Rather poetic, especially since the invisible player solves the case in part by being invisible. Others too have noted that being invisible can be a wondrous thing.

The ancient gods and goddesses used the Cap of Invisibility that originally belonged to Hades (who seemed to have very little use for it other than to fight the Titans. I suspect being the Lord of the Underworld and the ruler of darkness overrides the joys of invisibility.) It was used by Hermes and Athena, who then passed it on to Perseus. Even the immortals can benefit from invisibility. In Plato’s Republic we meet the Invisibility Ring of Gyges. Gyges, a shepherd up until the discovery of the magical ring, used its powers to seduce the queen, assassinate the king, and gain dominion over the land; an otherwise impossible climb up the social ladder, especially during Plato’s time. And then, there’s modern mythology: Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak. The most precious gift, inherited by his father, via the wise-old Dumbledore for protection. A gift that would save Harry’s life and assist in the fight against evil on several occasions.

Indeed, we were entertained by this woman’s story. She posted guerrilla art–drawings of older women in tutus dancing in the streets–in places that art did not belong. She used her invisibility to hide from negative consequences. Exactly right.

Joy and rage are both necessary tools to counter the effects of ageism twinned with sexism. Let’s not accept the tired old stereotypes. Perhaps by wryly donning the invisibility cloak on our own terms we can be disrupters and activists who change expectations around ageing. We won’t manage to completely overturn this last obstacle thrown at us by a tired, dated yet stubbornly persistent patriarchy but we can have some fun along the way dancing out on the streets.

But the truth is not quite that simple, as our artist acknowledges. 

Let’s be clear: invisibility for my cohort is no joke. It’s actually dangerous. It leads to exclusion from the workforce, financial precariousness, growing homelessness, bad health outcomes, elder abuse and silence and inaction in social policy

For good reason, many women are dismayed when they become unseen as a consequence of age. 

Aging isn’t easy on anyone, but there is a well-known social phenomenon called Invisible Woman Syndrome that can make it particularly hard on women.The feeling of not being seen is often acutely felt by middle-age women. At the half century mark, men are typically viewed as being at the zenith of their professional and personal lives, often leading organizations and companies and are viewed as accomplished and experienced.  This is in contrast to women whose main stock in trade is assumed to be their physical appearance, which we’re sold and told should be youthful and appealing to the male gaze.  

A survey that studied 2,000 women revealed that by the time they reach the age of 51, many women believed they had become invisible to men. Only 15% of the women felt that they had high or very high confidence in ANY area of their lives and 46% thought no one understood or addressed what aging and older women go through.

And it is not a matter solely, or at all, of wanting men to ogle us, though the idea that they would not regard us as sexual beings, just because we are older, is aggravating and absurd.

[M]ake no mistake, the problem of women, age, and perceived attractiveness is very real. As I explore in my memoir, Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason, while the sexualization of girls begins far too early, the de-sexualization of women sets in disturbingly young. “Various recent studies using extensive data from online dating sites have revealed that women’s perceived attractiveness by men hits its highest point at the age of eighteen and declines steadily thereafter,” writes Elizabeth Burch. According to Christian Rudder, co-founder of OkCupid, the peak age of women’s attractiveness is somewhere around twenty-two or twenty-three, with Rudder stating, “Younger is better and youngest is best of all.” Men, on the other hand, are seen as reaching their peak sexual attractiveness between forty-six and fifty.

In our view it goes much deeper than that. We think older women disappear because they are seen as nonentities, lacking any of those characteristics that society desires in people–power, money, beauty and more. Many women want to be acknowledged by the rest of society as the accomplished women that they are. Those refusing to acknowledge us are dismissing our multifaceted beings in a manner that reflects archaic attitudes closely linked to the equally archaic view that women reach their peak at the age of 22.

We can, together, change these attitudes, which raise barriers between us and the rest of society.

There is an undeniable sense of solidarity and power among older women who have grown out of societal projections of youthful beauty. The wholeness and integration that these invincible women have mustered is awe-inspiring. They seem to have a joined a mission of sorts: to survive patriarchy’s definitions of worthiness and to shine bright for each other. And shine they do. And sometimes, not as rarely as one would think, others catch a glimpse of their light, look up, and notice. They are more than visible, they are luminous.  

If we believe in our own power, and come together to support each other, we will indeed be luminous. And far from invisible. We will don the wide brim of invisibility when we find it useful, and throw it off when we don’t. It will indeed be our superpower.