About Becoming a Crone

Twelve days ago, I turned 50 years old. It is surreal to write those words. I don't feel 50, but then I don't know what one is supposed to feel like at 50. When I was a child, 50 was 100. When I was 30, it was the Golden Girls. When I was 40, it was the kids who were ninth graders when I was in kindergarten.

Inside, I am 25, 27 on an unusually enlightened day. So on some metaphysical level, 50 continues to feel beyond my realm of understanding. And yet the date of my birth certificate cannot be denied. Neither can the grey hair that I have for over a year dyed into temporary submission via periodic visits to my hair stylist. That I could take two round-trip flights to Detroit for the cost of one of these appointments is a source of some mortification for me. I ask myself why I continue to do it, to persist in the fiction of youth, even though I don't think of myself as old — instead, I think of a middle-aged Laura Dern on an episode of Enlightened, somewhat poignantly observing that she's neither young nor old.

I mean, I know why I do it. Every single woman over the age of 40 who dyes her hair knows why. We do it because we don't want to become crones, even if we we're not consciously thinking of that specific word.

Dictionaries are almost unanimously unkind to the crone, defining her as a withered and/or ugly and/or malicious old woman. The crone's Old North French origin is caroigne, or carrion, meaning a literal carcass. Curiously, there is no male equivalent to crone.

Of course, some feminists have reclaimed the word, making "croning" a rite of passage into an age of enlightenment and self-empowerment. But like most feminist projects, this one suffers from a deficit in effective branding; maybe the solution is for capitalism to do what it has traditionally done with feminism, which is to denature the crone into a consumable product. Where is the viral stunt pastry, the croissant-scone hybrid that trademarks the crone into something cute and sweet (but never dry!)? Where is "Are We Crones?", the bookend episode to Sex and the City's season three "Are We Sluts?" (Though I suppose that could have been the alternate title for And Just Like That.) Where is the line of lipstick, the tasteful athleisure wear, the brand of stylish yet supportive clogs?

In writing this, I feel the tension I usually experience when I write about almost anything pertaining to real life: that between wanting to laugh and wanting to punch something. Because I find this hilarious, or I would if I also didn't find it so infuriating, the way a woman's value is routinely yolked to youthful beauty and child-bearing hips. When I think about that, I think why not, bring on the crones (send in the crones?) — bring on the grey hair, give me a cauldron so I can get a few friends together and cast some goddamn spells. Or better yet, cast me the spell that I've been told is the secret power held by women over 50: that of not giving a single additional fuck. That's a rite of passage I can believe in.

**In order to simplify my life a bit, I've decided to dispense with Five for the Weekend and attach a few recommendations to my weekly dispatch. And so:

Reading: Nettie Jones's 1984 novel Fish Tales, republished last spring. It's the sex- and drug-fueled story of a hedonistic woman who bounces between New York and Detroit in the 1970s, and as this description implies, it's a wild ride.

Watching: The other night I re-watched Sliding Doors. It's such a comforting movie and at the same time so bad. I could write an entire newsletter about Gwyneth Paltrow's British accent work in the scene where she mutters "bollocks to you."

Listening: Brian Eno's "1/1." Seventeen minutes of interstellar bliss.