I must’ve been in grade V. My parents surprised us with a chance visit to our boarding school. As I delightfully gawked at them in the visitors’ room, an unsettling feeling of dullness simmered inside me seeing my mom dressed up in colors fit to adorn just the old. A listless, over the hill, wear loudly spelling out her geriatric depression. Would I need to ascribe to a similar parental archetype when I get to be her age, I mulled around in my head.
I’m ten years older than my mom’s age on the day of her visit that day, and life for a woman in her forties has twirled around from trying to look like a “mom” to trying to look like a “babe”. And did I read some time back that the erotica ‘Fifty Shades of Grey” was bought and read far more by women than men, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44? Hmmm…True that!
We women [and I will leverage on selectively excusing myself here and there ;)], in our forties and fifties suspire for more than the conventional conformities to a domestic and a professional role. While being all so good at juggling the work-children-home balance, there’s more a woman in her mid-life tangs for today- an unconcealed desire to be desired.
Our idea of desirability gleans inspiration from the silver screen and the handheld entertainment media that grooves on the “sexiness” and the physically desirable as the epitome of feminine beauty. Long played out is the opulent list of old fashioned compliments- drop-dead gorgeous; the most beautiful girl in the world; looking radiant; or as pretty as a picture. A flattering compliment for a woman these days would be calling her “sexy” instead of “beautiful”. No denying here. Okay- I meant covertly.
Research by Psychology Today reveals that “beauty” is characterized as pleasing the aesthetic senses, especially the sight; sexy is defined as causing feelings of sexual excitement or stimulating a desire in a man. Beautiful has to do with admiring a woman’s physical attributes; calling her “sexy” is conveying the sexual allurement.
So as I see this, there is probably but more transformation here- for most women a man conveying she is hot or sexy is not off the charts for her anymore. Allowing random men to call you “sexy” is no longer seen as a form of disrespect or an expression of unrighteous physical desire for you. And no, it is not inappropriate to be drawn to the lusts of the flesh any longer either [“Aww”]. Rather, most women like to accentuate their sexual appeal in the way they dress because being sexually desirable makes a woman feel in control over a man.
Resultantly, an eccentric fancy has taken over the women in their mid-years at large, with perceptions shaped by the media glamour icons. Zero figure obsession, over contoured faces, body shapers, push up padded dresses, surgical fixes, natural make-up look caked up faces, false eyes lashes, colored contact lens, manes of hair extensions, pedestaled footwear, lip jobs, nose jobs, botoxed faces, necks and hands, silicon paddings…the beauty-mending almanac is only getting thicker with the advancement in cosmetic applications and operative procedures.
Celeb diet plans, religious gym-ing priorities, Keto-diets, and pushing the body parts that are structurally unresponsive to diet and exercise- from incremental loss to drastic reshaping for that Kim Kashardian sexiness- oozing-look has taken the definition and the mania for looking beautiful [read as ‘sexy’] to the next level.
To do this for feeling beautiful is a passable reason, but for the under the wraps [perhaps subconscious] inclination to influence control over a man’s vulnerability to the feminine charms……Errr, how do I get more opposite gender traffic attentive to this blog?!!