Armitage middle-aged, or: Something mature fangirls wonder

[Thanks to a friend, for lending me her question.]

Something one reads about oneself a fair amount of time, when one’s surfing the Armitage Internet, is the allegation that Armitage fangirls are middle-aged. (Other adjectives get used with that, but I’ll stick to that one tonight.) It’s inaccurate — plenty of Armitage fangirls are young enough to be my (or even his) children. Still, I just turned forty-five, so I guess I qualify. Armitage said perhaps a bit prematurely when he was forty that he was middle-aged, probably as riposte to those who felt him too young and handsome to be cast as Thorin Oakenshield. But he’s forty-two-and-a-half now, so his earlier self-description is slowly coming true. As it will for us all. My generation is probably the “youngest” generation of forty-somethings ever to live in the U.S., in terms of general health, stylishness of interests, appearance, and purchasing power and taste, so the notion of “age appropriate” has changed drastically in the last several decades. It’s not like one turns forty and suddenly only wants to wear pastel dresses and sensible shoes — if that were ever true. My mother’s generation certainly didn’t act that way. And it’s a rare woman over the age of thirty who feels as old as she knows she is or as her body may tell her after strenuous exercise or not enough sleep.

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Playful as ever; Richard Armitage being especially age appropriate in Los Angeles at the premiere for the The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, December 2, 2013. You can see the little boy, the young actor, and, I suppose, if you like to fantasize about him as a parent, the father animatedly playing a dragon for his children.

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So time’s winged chariot will catch us all: Richard Armitage, me, and the people who hurl “middle-aged” around as an insult. That always strikes me as funny. First, everyone will be middle-aged sometime. (I hope, unless you die first, which I don’t wish even on my worst enemy.) Second, I guess people assume it’s bad to be middle-aged, or at least worse to be middle-aged than some other unspecified life stage. Am I supposed to be embarrassed? Dude, I earned these grey hairs (such as they are, there aren’t many yet, nor do I have wrinkles). It’s an honor to have gotten this far. Third, I wonder if there’s any positive life stage to be associated with the word “fan.” Teenage fangirl implies foolishness; elderly fangirl implies — I don’t know what, something inappropriate, I suppose — and middle-aged fangirl implies that I’ve somehow not noticed that my youth is over. The point in all of these labels is to make fun of female desire. Well, I’ve got news for you, epithet throwers — female desire and enthusiasm for the delights of life don’t end with forty, or fifty, or sixty, or even seventy. (I’ve never talked to anyone who’s eighty about this.) The ongoing discourse about this theme tends to suggest that the people who mobilize it feel threatened. One wonders why.

I like being middle-aged, I find, at least so far. I’d never seek the powerlessness of childhood again. Sometimes I think it might be fun to be twenty-five or twenty-seven again, insofar as I would feel less burdened by my relationship with time, but looking back, I realize equally how unrealistic my picture of life was. I was more frivolous then and perhaps fearless in a naive way, but I’m more practical now. I don’t waste as much time. I’ve got more money, even a little cushion (so I can go to see The Desolation of Smaug many times), and the confidence, after proving myself over two decades of a career, that I can do something important even if I end up leaving this career behind me for something else. I’m more conscious of my power. I dare more. I have better friends. I see other people more clearly and am less disappointed by them and more pleased. When I am disappointed by anything, I can process it better. My relationships with students have improved as my anxiety that I’m the only one who can address all of their needs has abated. I’m less worried about appearances, and much more able to accept myself for who I am. Sex has gotten better and better, mostly because I know myself now and I’m more confident, but I guess also because the hormones line up a little more energetically for a lot of women at this life stage. And I’ve learned that it’s okay to have my own needs and comfort as a priority, a notion that I couldn’t assimilate two decades ago.

I don’t want to paint forty-five as a bed of roses, because it isn’t, and you’ve been reading here for four years about all the ways that the fifth decade of one’s life can turn out unexpectedly, bad, wrong. (I also would never want to claim to speak to people who have children at home, because that changes everything, and it’s decisive on the income question; I’m only speaking for myself, here.) Still, because of my life experiences, I’m more competent than I ever have been to face the things that have happened to me. And, aware that my life will not last forever, I’ve become free to ask myself big questions.

I can’t remember where I found this quote — but I screenshot it because it spoke to me:

Unraveling is a good word; letting go of baggage I don’t need; living my life to the fullest, full in the face of the challenges one’s thrown as an adult. And giving myself permission to come alive. One regret — that I didn’t see that sooner.

A friend and I were talking tonight about one aspect of this problem — the promises that one has made, the obligations that one entered, years earlier, and which are still pending — which ones are permanent? Which ones can be let go? Which ones will need to be renegotiated? We agreed that the sorting out of all of this can hardly be black-and-white; that as exasperated as we get with some of our commitments, we still wouldn’t have exchanged them because they make up part of our lives. And yet — we wonder. Why one is forced into such long term commitments as a matter of course when one is younger, when one sets out on a life journey. Without regretting, what would we have done differently? Or what do we truly regret?

And then my friend said, “How can someone possibly get all that right? I wonder what Mr. A. would say if someone asked him about what he regrets? Presumably he has them. What would he change now, if he could? What did he choose wrong? What will he be happy with until he dies?”

So, yeah, we wonder.

What would Armitage change? If anything? (What did he mean in LA at the TDOS premiere, when he said that playing Thorin had caused him to look at his life again, and change?)

What would we change? What would we keep?

What would you change? And what would you keep?

~ by Servetus on March 11, 2014.