As `Interesting Older Woman' hopes fade, it's time to settle for just older
by Beth Teitell

Wednesday, March 7, 2001

If I've blown this deadline I'm really going to be upset.

I long ago accepted that my chance to be an ingenue had passed, but now I worry that it's also too late for another goal: to become, in time, an Interesting Older Woman.

I want to be a Katharine Hepburn, a Lauren Bacall, a woman who might have hosted Jackson Pollack's first exhibit in her living room, or lived in Paris after the war - but, darling, that was a lifetime ago - the kind of older woman who takes courses at Radcliffe and curses and is thinking of joining the Peace Corps.

She is a broad and a lady and has friends in their 20s. Her grandchildren - if she has them - call her by her first name and borrow her CDs. She has grad students over for dinner and plays the violin and is fascinated by everything. She's liberal and sexy, and unashamed of her age, though no one knows exactly what that is.

``When,'' I asked a friend, ``do you have to start laying the groundwork for that kind of thing?''

``I'm sorry,'' she said. ``But I think you'd already be on your way. There'd be an ethnic necklace, or some flowy clothing, or a doctoral thesis, even if you hadn't finished it, or something. The interesting older woman lived abroad when she was younger, which is the period you're in now, and you're in Boston, not painting in Rome, or working as a spy in Budapest at a time when spies were glamorous.''

She was quiet for a moment and a look of sadness washed over her face.

``It's my fault, too,'' she added. ``You need more eccentric friends.''

Although I now realize my friends are my problem, not me, I called another to discuss my potential future. ``You should be careful,'' she said. ``There's a fine line between `interesting' and `dotty.' One day you're letting your hair go gray and being asked to pose for an Eileen Fisher ad, the next you're wearing too much rouge and ski pants in July.''

Then she told me something I hadn't known about her. She, too, wanted to become an interesting older woman, but a few years back accepted that she didn't have what it takes. ``I don't have the legs for it. Or family in Connecticut.''

She decided to play to her strengths and go for a different type: ``Judy Garland is my role model,'' she said. ``She drank a little too much and was constantly obsessing about her weight. I want to be a neurotic, pill-popping star. But I think it may be too late for that, too. Try as I may, I don't have the discipline for an eating disorder.''

``What I'm looking forward to,'' a woman in her 30s told me, ``is just being an older woman, period. I think the standards are much lower. If you make an attempt to look good, or take a course, or have merely heard of Eminem you get credit. That's what I want.''

Yeah, me too, I guess. At a certain point in life you learn to take what you can get.