NotNormativelyHuman 221
(50). Women age, or rather are being aged, differently, even
precociously, as Susan Sontag argues in "The Double Standard of
Aging"(1979):
Most men experience getting older with regret, apprehension. But most
womenexperienceitevenmorepainfully:withshame.Agingisaman's
destiny,somethingthatmusthappenbecauseheisahumanbeing.Fora
woman,aging is notonly herdestiny.Because she is[a]more narrowly
defined kind of human being, a woman, it is also her vulnerability.
("DoubleStandard"469)Onebiologicalprocessaroundwhichthis vulnerability aggregatesis
the menopause, as Simone de Beauvoir had already argued a decade
earlier: " Whereas man grows old gradually, woman is suddenly
deprived of her femininity; she is still relatively young when she loses
the erotic attractiveness and the fertility which, in the view of society
and in her own, provide the justification of her existence and her
opportunity for happiness" (640). As feminists have repeatedly argued,
the menopause—a concept which did not even exist until the late 19th
century and is thus evidence of the progressive normalization of the
female body—has become a significant milestone in the cultural
temporalityofagingforwomen.^60
Lynne Segal has recently echoed many of these views, highlighting
once again the special vulnerability of women to cultural constructions
of "age": "Ageing affects us all, and affects us all differently, but it is
women who have often reported a very specific horror of ageing" (13).
But it is not only their own fear that makes women's later life an object
of fear; there is also a cultural fear of old women, a gerontophobic
complex deeply entrenched in many cultures, not only of the present,
and not only of the Global North. Segal presents a long list of cultural
iconsof"age"whichtestifyto"thedistincthorrorattachedtotheageing
female... the hag, harridan, gorgon, witch or Medusa" (13). Issues
deriving from the "double standard of aging" (as Sontag calls it in the
title of her book), especially the "double jeopardy" of being old and a
(^60) The key text here is Germaine Greer'sThe Change: Women, Aging, and the
Menopause.NewYork:Penguin,1992.Print.