I love aging, and I think one of the worst lies patriarchy tells women is that aging makes us irrelevant and worthless, that aging is something to be ashamed of. As with everything in patriarchy this lie has a malicious intention, and it runs like a straight line through patriarchy’s stories of wicked witches and scary crones. Aging women, older women are stronger women, more independent women, women who’ve lost their insecurities and who do not live to please, and there’s no bigger threat to the system of male dominance and female subordination. Of course women need to be taught to worship youth and of course older women need to be hidden away under notions of them being irrelevant and pathetic or strange, because otherwise women would be much more difficult to control, and older women would take over the world. The strength women unfold within themselves when they get older is unyielding; it stands tall as a tree and has deep, deep roots. Men have much to loose in women realizing this. Women have everything to gain.
“My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her;—out of a sullen hollow in a livid hill-side, her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was—liberty. Liberty was the breath of Emily’s nostrils; without it she perished.”
— Charlotte Brontë on Emily Brontë, quoted in Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë.
september mood: willow trees, antique hair brushes, magazine stands, eating plums while walking back to home, cleaning your wardrobe, thrift shops, smell of apple pie, reading jane eyre, watching documentaries about witches and vampires, dying flowers, wandering around malls without intending to buy anything, having long physiological conversations, looking at style inspirations while drinking coffee
