The Old Woman You Didn't Know You Needed

The Voices We Ignore

Mad Max: Fury Road was an objectively good movie, and one of the best times I’ve ever had in the theater. The story, the acting, the sheer audacity of it… all wonderful.

The movie was also remarkable in that it gave us something we don’t often see (then or now): Middle-aged and old women, a whole group of them being portrayed positively AND realistically.

There’s no shortage of perfect girl bosses in film and TV. Collectively, we’re all rather sick of them. The Many Mothers—bad asses though they were—were not given super powers. They were women, with all the frailty that implies, though they powered through those frailties to make a difference. They identified themselves, first and foremost, as mothers. As caregivers. As people who make things grow. And in their brief time with the young women under their care, they were able to pass on that wisdom and steer the girls away from cynicism.

Even in the most wholesome of Hallmark movies, we don’t get a lot of this from older women on the screen.

Instead, we are more often confronted with meddling mothers and mothers-in-law, conniving women like Gemma Teller from Sons of Anarchy, who are hellbent on ruining the joy of younger women.

Bitterness is a common theme in older women (We all remember the mom from Titanic). Worse, we’re now being confronted with a slew of “cougars,” who behave like desperate, oversexed predators, all while complaining about similar behavior when displayed by men.

If you have never heard of MILF Island, consider yourself lucky.

Who are Young Women Supposed to Look Up To?

These pervasive archetypes seem to set up a weird combativeness between older women and younger women. Like we’re competing.

In my post about older men, I mentioned Don Draper taking a young Peggy under his wing. It was a positive interaction, despite Don’s…. questionable behavior.

A male character is often seen as a mentor to both sexes. It works and it’s realistic. Females generally do not mentor males—at work or in their personal lives. Only in very rare cases. Get mad if you want. Point to the one case in a million. It’s cool.

But as a rule, it doesn’t happen. And if you think it does, ask yourself, is it the young man pointing to the older woman, saying “Yep, she’s my mentor.” Or is it the woman taking that title for herself?

Women mentor other women. Or at least they used to.

TV has been better at this than movies, at least in my own limited experience. If any true cinephiles out there disagree, feel free to let me know.

Sheldon’s Mom on The Big Bang Theory is an excellent example. A loving southern woman who cares for her unusual son and takes the time to help mentor Penny, her son’s neighbor. She visits only occasionally, but her warmth shines through her sternness to the point that even young, liberal Penny doesn’t get defensive when Sheldon’s mom advises her to wear less slutty tops on a first date to communicate she’s looking for something serious.

Going back farther, Marilla Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables has to be the pinnacle of female mentorship. Far from the badass heroines of Mad Max: Fury Road, Marilla is an old maid who lives with her brother. She and her brother adopt an orphan, wanting a boy to help with manual labor around the farm. Instead, they get the ginger tornado, Anne Shirley.

Anne is in need of some mentorship. How to hold her temper. How to apologize. How to be a regal lady even with limited means.

Marilla is stern and won’t put up with any nonsense. But she’s not hard and she’s not mean, which is rare in TV these days.

Often when a female character says something like “I don’t take any shit,” what she truly means is that she is an awful person and is pleased by that.

Letting Women Grow Up

While TV has done right by older women, it can commit the sin of keeping their women characters in a perpetual state of 20-something immaturity. Comedies in particular are bad about this. Think of Friends.

Yeah, they entered relationships and had kids. But look at their behavior. Did they grow up? Did Monica or Rachel really mature in the ten years the show was on the air?

Or Gilmore Girls. That was even more egregious. The show ran for seven seasons, but came back with a mini-series thirteen years after the fact. Lorelei, the mother, was just as childish and silly as she had been on season 1 of the show and Rory, the daughter, was WORSE. So much worse!

I will give the show props for its treatment of Emily, Lorelei’s mother. Though insufferable and snooty, her arc was the most satisfying in my opinion.

This broad-scale infantilism wasn’t done as a plot point. I suspect it was unintentional. The writers just kept them this way and I think it has a lot to do with our collective fear of acting OLD.

I previously wrote about how the word “Matronly” has become a slur, though it didn’t use to be. Instead, we now have the expectation for women in their 50s to adopt the same look, lifestyle, and mannerisms as girls in their 20s. Why? Is that progress?

Teens Listen to Media More than Real People. Deal with It.

Rather than complain about the fact that young women will listen to other idiot Zoomers on TikTok while ignoring their mother’s sage advice, I’d like to make fictionalized woman mentors more available to them.

TV in general needs to improve in our current entertainment season, but the representation of older women as mentors is especially in need of attention.

Older women sharing their hard-won experience protects younger, more vulnerable women. Not only from predatory men, though that’s a big part of it.

They also serve to protect younger women from our accommodating nature. And it IS our nature to be agreeable. Don’t let anyone tell you society made us this way. There’s a reason women with autism don’t fit in with girl groups. The natural agreeableness and consensus-seeking found in females is diminished or entirely absent in girls with autism. They see the pervasiveness of this quality among women because they themselves lack it.

Average young women don’t see it because a fish does not perceive the water in which it swims.

Older women, especially those well past dating and childrearing, are the ones who can point out what girls cannot yet perceive. Ideally it would be a real-life woman to do this. But not every girl is so lucky.

Let there be more Marillas in film and TV. Let a girl see what it looks like to have an older woman be badass in ways that have nothing to do with throwing a grenade or saying mean things without provocation.

And not to be selfish about it, but as I reach a certain age… maybe I’d like someone to look up to as well.