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Alison Piepmeier

My life is all about bringing down the patriarchy. I write books and articles about feminism, and I also teach and direct the Women's and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston....

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Getting older

A week from today will be my 35th birthday.

It sounds sort of old to me, although when I try to make sure my partner understands the significance of this birthday--”35! This is a big one!”--in an effort to be sure I’m appropriately gifted, he seems unimpressed.

I’m not at all worried about turning 35.  In fact, I think one of the great untold secrets of womanhood is that getting older is excellent.   Nobody prepared me for how wonderful it would be to be in my thirties.  I seem to be done with a lot of the petty anxieties of my teens and twenties, the worries about whether I was smart enough to make it through grad school or whether I was with the right person.  Ten years ago, I was full of ideas, but uncertain.  I was smart but always second-guessing myself, afraid of doing the wrong thing.  I would apologize even when I hadn’t done anything wrong.  I seemed comfortable but felt like an imposter.

These days, I feel secure in my life.  When I stand up in front of a classroom full of college students, I have things to say and I know it.  I feel confident in a way that I don’t even think I could have wrapped my head around as a twenty-five-year-old.  I lead meetings.  I write articles (and blog posts).  I have opinions about things and evidence to back them up, and I get in arguments.  I win arguments.  People I don’t know ask my opinion about issues, and they listen carefully as I respond.  And even some of the goofy stuff, like my sense of being in my own body, has improved.  I like this thirty-five-year-old body-- I like my graying hair, my smile wrinkles, and I find I’m sort of fascinated by the two small age spots that have recently appeared on my right hand.  And although I don’t care to go into detail, let me allude to the fact that the sex drive of a woman in her thirties leaves a woman in her twenties in the dust.

We hear a lot about Botox and face-lifts, about women buying products to help them fight the aging process--this stuff makes it sound like getting older is the worst thing that could happen to a woman.  Getting older is great!  I’m loving my thirties, and if my mom’s life is any indication, it looks like the next couple of decades will just keep getting better.