Being Seen and Heard

“Invisible” used to be the biggest and most valid complaint of older women ten years ago. I was then in my mid-sixties and I certainly felt like that. Visibility is the sense that people like you are represented in a number of different ways. In films at the cinema. On television in dramas as well as advertisements. In magazines and newspapers. In fashion spreads and articles. In those brochures that constantly drop onto the doormat trying to sell us their clothes. When it came to representations of older women, there was such a dearth that it felt as though a pandemic had wiped us all out!

And yet this was happening at a time when there were more older people in the population than ever before, especially older women, who outlived men by four years.

Look Fabulous Forever was born, in large part, out of the frustration I felt about this state of affairs. The dismissive and uninterested treatment I received at beauty counters really irked me. The anti-ageing labels insulted me. The routine air-brushing in photos of the faces of high profile older women like Mary Berry and Judi Dench offended me. The message was clear: you may live well into your 80s, but you must do so according to the rules of our game: You cannot be considered beautiful or acceptable in public life unless you have had lots of ‘work’ done, you must cover your grey hair either with a wig or hair dye, and if you do have wrinkles we’ll obliterate them before we deign to publish any pictures of you.

For the last ten years I have been banging the same drum and, whilst I am not claiming it was all down to the stand I have taken via LFF (!!) I do believe that our positive and celebratory approach to ageing has helped to shift the dial. 

Some recent positive examples of increased visibility for older women and their lives. 

1 - Frances McDormand (66) winning the Best Actress Oscar in 2021 for Nomadland. 

2 - The story of ‘Nomadland’ itself centred on an older woman who had lost everything. It also won Best Picture and Best Director for Chloe Zhao.

3 - Judi Dench at 85 being the oldest person ever to have appeared on a Vogue cover in 2020.

4 - Sally Wainwright (60) writing some brilliant series for TV featuring older women as the main characters: Sarah Lancashire and Siobhan Finneran in Happy Valley (2023), Anne Reid in Last Tango in Halifax (2020) and Suranne Jones in Gentleman Jack (2023).

5 - Ann Cleves (68) whose books about Vera set in Northumberland have been adapted for the wonderful series on ITV of the same name starring Brenda Blethyn (77) as the lead detective.

6 - Angela Rippon at 78 being the oldest Strictly Come Dancing competitor for this year’s series and who is giving some of the younger ones a lesson in style and rhythm. 

7 - Older faces appearing more frequently in advertisements for big companies like Virgin Atlantic, McDonalds and Pandora jewellery. This normalises ageing and shows us being a regular part of everyday life. 

8 - Iris Apfel becoming a style icon in her 90s. She is now 102 years old.

9 - More celebrities embracing grey hair, which has become trendy in recent years - even among the young. Jamie Lee Curtis, Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton and Andie McDowell all have gorgeous grey hair and of course George Clooney is the ultimate silver fox.

10 - Lyse Doucet (64) reporting regularly from the front line of war zones like Ukraine and currently in the Middle East.

I hope you feel as heartened as I do by this evidence that older women are no longer invisible. Playwrights and screenwriters have woken up to the fact that older women often have a compelling and interesting story to tell. We have many brilliant older actresses both in this country and abroad including Alison Steadman, Leslie Manville, Harriet Walter, Francis Tomelty, Julianne Moore, Jane Fonda, Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve, and it would seem that older female faces are now acceptable in advertisements and on magazine covers, although I loathe the fact that airbrushing out most signs of age is still rife.

So we are decidedly more visible than ten years ago, but are we being heard?  Along with rarely seeing anyone in the public eye who represented my lived experience, there were also few women reflecting that experience by writing about it, apart perhaps from Virginia Ironside and Katherine Whitehorn. When I had the idea to write a weekly blog with the launch of LFF, I had no idea of the level of commitment that this would entail. Over five hundred blogs later, writing my weekly missive has become an important and integral part of my working week, and one that gives me the most consistent satisfaction.

My initial motivation for the blogs was to bolster the confidence of women who, in our ageist society, were deemed to be uninteresting at best and irrelevant at worst. To begin with I concentrated on style with blogs about makeup, clothes, hair, skincare, shoes and underwear. Taking inspiration from  ‘Advanced Style’ with Ari Seth Cohen and his fabulous photographs of older women in New York, in the early days, we commissioned a photographer to go out onto the streets of London to capture the images of as many wonderfully stylish older women as could be spotted. We got some great photos, but it was expensive and time consuming and quite hit and miss. We also got lots of our customers saying “we have stylish women in the North/East/West/Scotland/Wales you know!” So we have since changed tack to do more in depth fashion features called ‘My Super Stylish Friend’ with individuals who have an interesting style story to share. And this year, our Style Guides were very well received as a source of inspiration to encourage you to try a whole new look courtesy of our LFF in-house team of Bryony and Amelia, ably supported by Sally.

As I wrote more and more blogs, I realised quite quickly that I didn’t need to confine myself to how we present ourselves to the outside world. When I was commissioned to write my book ‘Living the Life More Fabulous’ I decided to extend the scope of looking fabulous to include a chapter on food and nutrition, another on physical activity and exercise, and also to write about confidence and attitudes to ageing. These are themes that I still return to fairly regularly, often because I have heard something of interest on the radio or read some new and important research that I think you should all know about. My mission as ever is to encourage a sort of ‘fabulous mindset’ in your approach to every aspect of your ageing mind and body.

The way that I approach my weekly blog is entirely unplanned and somewhat random in nature. When the latest one is published on a Sunday morning, I often have absolutely no idea what I will write about when I sit down at my laptop the day after on the Monday morning. All I know is that a germ of an idea will invariably present itself. I figure that if it interests me, then it will very likely interest you too. Fairly recently I have also risked writing what I suppose you’d call ‘an opinion piece’. This usually emerges from a real ‘bee in my bonnet’ which has often been buzzing around my head for quite a while. Sometimes I get push back from customers who will say “I came here to buy makeup, not to hear your thoughts about x, y or z.” Fair enough, but very many more of you will say “you have articulated exactly what I am feeling about this. Thank you for writing it!”

Throughout my life I have always loved writing. At pivotal moments I have kept a journal of events as they unfolded. Last time was during 2012 when I documented the first year of my special granddaughter India’s life with all its ups and downs, fears, worries and heartaches. Happily, out of all of that high emotion and drama, Look Fabulous Forever was born in 2013. 

Alongside the very real pleasure I have had of building a business for the past ten years, I have also loved, loved, loved finding my voice and articulating on behalf of all of you just what it feels like to be an older woman living in the world today. And, of course, there’d be no point if there was no audience for what I write! So, thank you for being my reader and for joining in the conversation. Reading your intelligent, kind, and supportive comments is the highlight not just of my Sunday morning, but the whole week.

So, a time to celebrate ten years of LFF. And also a time to celebrate the power and beauty of older women - at long last both seen and heard!

Tricia x

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