What say we euthanize all women over 45? Let’s just quietly put them to death.
Be done with it. Cut out the whole messy interim: shrilling books and articles, time-wasting demonstrations, touchy-feely groups, expensive therapists, talk show diatribes by legions of midlife-tarnished females. Clip off the fading commodity just past its bloom, neat and clean as last year’s rosebush. Recycle us as fertilizer, or pureed into a nutritious supplement, sprinkled over the breakfast cereal of cheerleaders.
Germaine Greer becomes Soylent Green.
It seemed a good idea when a man I know (unidentified here; witness protection program) shoved a newspaper article in front of my face. The piece described actress Susan Sarandon’s struggle to get film roles in which fortysomething women were still depicted as vital and sexual. The article suggested that Sarandon’s plight was typical for modern actresses: that desirable female roles evaporate after 40, while male actors continue to be considered delicious at any age; often co-starring with women who could be their daughters. My friend complained he had read this sort of article a million times already, and couldn’t anybody offer him some new news, or at least glitz up the old news in fresher ways? And anyway, he demanded, why should findings like this article’s be a surprise to anyone, now or ever? Men like young and beautiful: Duh!
I stared at him a moment, feeling hot and culpable. Then my mouth opened and I heard it blurt, a little too brightly: Well, let’s just kill them all.
He looked at me.
Why not, I argued. In one swell foop, shut up the social critics, solve the employment pool drain, streamline insurance, medical and psychiatric workloads. Reroute funding for costly hormone therapy, breast and ovarian cancer research. Detonate the population bomb! Even up that darned lifespan disparity! Shrink the welfare lines!
Everything can then revert to the “classic” ideal: Men of all ages will be encouraged, no, expected to date prepubescents, to make babies with teenagers and have domiciles kept by a very mature crop of 20-year-olds. These worthy women will be grandmothers at 40 and then, spent and content, probably just relieved to step into the sleepytime machine at 45.
Tracking me? The resulting population will be brilliant-rosy, impeccably groomed, gravity-resistant, cheerful. Men, of course, will continue as they always have, unimpeded by balding, paunches or wrinkles: squiring and siring ’til the last, partnering as many bouncy bunnies as their own irrepressible energies can accommodate. And as everybody knows, that’s a heap o’ squeezin’.
Finally, an end to language wars. No more coast-to-coast bickering about correctness. Attention postal service: Drop your cares about proper forms of address! (All will be Miss; except for the Little Missuses.) Think of the energy we’re saving here!
And gals: our shortened terms on earth will prove intensely purposeful: fast-forward; action-packed! No more flopping around trying to make sense of post-prime-time, no bothering our terminally pretty heads with notions of How Then to Live. We’ll be patriots, too, fulfilling the national mandate to Just Look Eighteen, Baby. Best of all, we’ll take gorgeous photographs. Every woman alive knows what this counts for. Imagine: all our days, a vivid sequence of Kodak moments. Beauty bytes.
And as for roles in cinema? No mystery there: depend on a steady stream of pert, unblemished you-know-what. Of course, older female parts will have to be played by elderly guys. Hey, they did it in Shakespeare’s day. It’ll create new jobs. And these types can also stand in as surrogates for kids (and grownups) who wish their auntie or grandma-or lover or sister or mother-had been allowed to stick around a little bit longer.
Life: the Lite version.
I can see the legislation lobbies, the television campaigns: It’s a final solution, and a nourishing food supplement!
My male friend gaped at me for a couple of minutes. And how I did enjoy that! Watching his face rearrange itself, like blops of oil hitting a real hot pan, I knew I’d scored. I may never again feel the key turn in the lock with such a thick, rich click; never again enjoy such a definitive last word-or should I say, gasp.
My birthday’s coming, very soon. Yes, it’s that number. Hmm. Let’s have another look at that fine print, shall we? Maybe, just possibly, we can renegotiate.
I hope it’s not too late.
