Sheila O’Flanagan: ‘I don’t need to be patronised and told that every line on my face tells a story’

Perhaps it’s coincidence, but in the selection of novels I’ve recently read, almost every female character over the age of fifty has been described the same way. Physically, she has grey hair and a lined and wrinkled face. She’s baffled by modern life. She’s tired and careworn and can’t use her smartphone properly.

She’s also someone I don’t recognise; and I was so irritated by this portrayal of older women in fiction that I tweeted about it. Suddenly my timeline was swamped with glorious photos of fifty-and-sixty something ladies mountain climbing, motor biking, playing sports, engaging in martial arts, socialising with their friends and looking absolutely fabulous.

Their hair was a variety of colours and cuts, their clothes were stylish, and none of them appeared to have any problem with technology, all having tweeted excellent photos without any issue.

Why is it, then, so many authors, both male and female, feel that in their novels older women should be bewildered technophobes who never seem to visit the hairdresser or a beauty salon?

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It occurred to me that these authors are younger than the characters they’re writing about, and so the older woman they’ve created in their imagination thinks, feels (and unfortunately) looks like a generic brand. Additionally, there seems to be only two modes in which this generic woman functions. Haggard and bewildered, or ancient and wise. In contrast with the grey-haired and lined face of the befuddled sixty-year-old, the ancient old woman (who might be all of fifty) has embraced her age, allowed her hair to grow wild, and knows about herbs and traditional remedies, which she dispenses along with her half-century of wisdom, to the brighter, conflicted and ambitious younger characters she meets. Those more important younger characters will then have their life-path made much clearer thanks to their interaction with someone who, at the start of the novel, they’d dismissed as a dotty old crone.

I look forward to more and more older authors writing believable older characters. I hope I do this myself

Male characters of the same age are generally still ambitious and forward thinking (although they may regret not having spent enough time with their now adult children with whom they’re trying to repair their relationship) but generic old woman is often backward looking and wistful, regretting either that she worked or she didn’t, unhappy in her marriage, and her life only made meaningful thanks to her children and the problems she has to solve for them.

This is not how the respondents to my tweet feel or live. They are, to a woman, bright, confident and full of enthusiasm for the future. They have diverse interests and appearances. But all agree that we don’t recognise ourselves in generic old women and don’t see enough of our true selves reflected back through the pages of books, or the screen, or the media.

As one respondent pointed out, it’s insulting to be given well-meaning but patronising information on symptoms of the menopause by a thirty-year-old who hasn’t experienced it, while you yourself are in the throes of a hot flush. It’s equally annoying to be portrayed as someone who can’t use a smartphone when you worked through frequent crashes of your company’s computer system back in the day, and can still do a quick Control+Alt+Delete without even looking. Or when you actually watched Steve Jobs introducing the first Apple Phone and thought to yourself, I want one of those.

Perhaps too, the problem is the almost invisibility of women over the age of 40 in the media talking about interests other weakening bones or ageing skin or how to keep young.

I don’t want to keep young, thank you very much. Being young was a minefield of self-doubt and uncertainty although (sadly) not appreciating my firmer skin and ability to wear high heels all day. Being older allows me to draw on years of accumulated knowledge, to know and understand what I like about myself, to be happy about my achievements, to be able to tell someone ‘no’ without making up a million excuses, to look forward just as much as looking back and to decide that while some social media is great, not all of it is either necessary or desirable.

I don’t need to be patronised and told that every line on my face tells a story. I don’t need to believe that grey hairs are good and that dyeing it is selling out. I make my own choices and I know how to live with them.

And I look forward to more and more older authors writing believable older characters. I hope I do this myself — in my most recent book, What Eden Did Next, one of the main characters is a widow in her seventies, and she still looks to the future with great hope. And one of my previous novels, The Women Who Ran Away, sees a friendship forged between a forty-year-old and sixty-year-old woman that enhances both their lives on a road trip through France and Spain. For younger authors to write authentic older people it would be a help if they were given inspiration by more and more older women being asked their opinions on the wider issues of the day. Because while the old lady dispensing wisdom and herbs might be a trope, she’s based on fact. And the fact is that women in their sixties know a damn sight more than we’re given credit for.

And we’d like to see that acknowledged, both in fact and in fiction.