Shades of grey: Red lipsticks, leather boots

I was happy for her. Happier that she had prioritised herself. Happiest that she didn’t care how she was judged, an old woman about to lose her mind. She wasn’t an aberration.

Two days later, amid an end-of-season sale at a hip Delhi store, two 60-plus women were scanning the beachwear section, planning for a holiday in Thailand now that the pandemic was in pause mode. Friends ever since they bought their first swimsuits and after many losses in their lives, they had vowed to hold each other up, white hair and troubling gout be damned. They would wade into the waters.

And just when I was somewhat awed by their exceptionalism, came a third one, this time my 75-year-old aunt. Partly immobile after a fall and with a chronic vision problem, she sold her home and booked her place in a retirement community, simply because inmates there went on an excursion every weekend. “I live alone, so I am responsible enough to look out for myself, even on a wheelchair,” she told me. Her older brother, my dad, would never have that confidence. I doubted if I would.

Is a grey revolution brewing in India, where women past their retirement age are proving that they certainly aren’t past their expiry date? That they are beyond illnesses, vanities, fear, anxieties, expectations and the tyranny of agelessness? That they can squeal like a teen because joyfulness is everybody’s right? Besides they have saved well and budgeted smart to splurge and live their dream life, on their terms, proving that gendered ageism is a myth, a fog of women’s own insecurities, a trap of their own making. They have realised that society may love victimhood but love you equally if you dared to be Thelma or Louise.

Age-appropriateness is actually about bowing to everybody’s expectation but your own. The jersey top has to cover the hips, the kurtas must be comfort-fit, the sari cannot be a bright red, the make-up must be minimal, and the hair better not dyed anymore. Perhaps the right word should be age-attractiveness.

Some studies say that women above 65 are the most ambitious because they are unencumbered and totally at ease with embracing themselves as they are, irrespective of success or failure, oblivious to looks or the lack of it. Most importantly, the lens of judgment moves away from them because they are considered over the hill. Only there is a greener valley on the other side, where red lipsticks and leather boots can co-exist with the maturity of fine wine, the wisdom of well-casked years.

This completeness then is a new constituency of power, one that marketers are not immune to. That’s why Gucci got 82-year-old Jane Fonda, the fitness icon of all time, to model for its elegant suit and eco-friendly bag. Pop goddess Cher features in M.A.C. Cosmetics’ latest campaign while singer-poet Patti Smith, 74, is the brand ambassador for a travel bag company, Rimowa, alongside the much younger Rihanna. The brand even uses her new poem, ‘Never still’ as its punchline, asking people “to reclaim motion”.

One could argue that they have always had a brand value in public life, their achievements glossing over their every wart and furrow. But nobody knew 65-year-old coffee shop owner Ong Bee Yan, whom a young Singapore designer discovered for his brand campaign. Since then, a reclusive woman, who feared dementia, has been the confident, sharp and elegant face of many ads. “Old dogs can learn new tricks,” she said. There is life in the old dog yet.