Last year, one month after turning 50 , I packed up my belongings into two suitcases and moved to Paris. Why Paris? As I like to tell people who ask, it’s because the chairs at the cafes face out to the world. Let me explain.
For a woman living in a late capitalist culture, one invariably reaches an age (40, give or take) at which one becomes invisible. Desire can no longer be marketed to us, nor can anything we do or say be sold as desirable to other demographics. We are neither nubile potential procreator nor homely grandmother.
We occupy a wholly liminal space between roles deemed valuable by the market system. But not in Paris. I first arrived in the city of lights at 18 and have returned every few years since.
Over time I noticed that the older I got, rather than being rendered invisible, I increasingly felt seen and respected. Even desirable. Today, at cafes where there are a number of groups waiting for a table, I will be prioritised.
I’ve been told by other women it’s due to my age. My hairdresser who touches up my roots every two months repeatedly asks if “we can just go grey..
.it will look beautiful. In Paris grey is beautiful.
” Indeed, I watch elegant women in their fifties and sixties with messy salt and pepper up-dos striding the streets, turning heads with their aesthetic audacity, and I’m tempted. I had a lover 12 years my junior who I hooked up with for many years whenever I came to Paris. I saw him looking at my wrinkles one night.
I got self-cons.