Authors: Lynne Segal
35
Ibid., p. 435.
36
Gloria Steinhem,
Doing Sixty and Seventy
, San Francisco, Elders Academy Press, 2006.
37
Heilbrun,
The Last Gift of Time
, p. 50.
38
Barbara Ehrenreich,
Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World
, London, Granta, 2010.
39
Virginia Ironside,
The Virginia Monologues
, London, Penguin, 2009, pp. 74–5.
40
Ibid., p. 73.
41
Irma Kurtz,
About Time: Growing Old Disgracefully
, London, John Murray, 2009.
42
Eva Figes, ‘Coming to Terms’, in Joanna Goldsworthy, ed.,
A Certain Age: Reflecting on the Menopause
, London, Virago, 1993, p. 145.
43
Karen Peterson, ‘Till Viagra do us part?’,
USA Today
, 21 March 2001, available at
usatoday30.usatoday.com
.
44
See William Masters and Virginia Johnson,
The Human Sexual Response
, Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 1966.
45
See Richard Lewontin, ‘Sex, Lies, and Social Science’,
New York Review of Books
, 20 April 1995.
46
Frida Kerner Furman,
Facing the Mirror: Older Women and Beauty Shop Culture
, Routledge, New York and London, 1997; Laura Hurd, ‘Older Women’s Perceptions of Ideal Body Weight: The tensions between health and appearance motivations for weight loss’,
Ageing and Society
22 (2002), pp. 751–7.
47
Tiina Vares, ‘Reading the “Sexy Oldie”: Age(ing) and Embodiment’,
Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society
12: 4 (2009), pp. 503–24.
48
See Sally-Marie Bamford, report for The International Longevity Centre – UK,
The Last Taboo: A guide to dementia, sexuality, intimacy and sexual behaviour in care homes
, June 2011, available at
ilcuk.org.uk
; Alzheimer’s Society,
Sex and Dementia
, available at
www.alzheimers.org.uk
.
49
Sara Maitland, ‘Role Models for the Menopausal Woman’, in Goldsworthy, ed.,
A Certain Age
, p. 208.
50
Lisa Appignanesi,
Losing the Dead: A Family Memoir
, London, Chatto & Windus, 1999, p. 223.
51
Simone de Beauvoir,
The Ethics of Ambiguity
, New York: Citadel Press, 1996 (first published, Paris, Gallimard, 1947). As the feminist scholar Anne McClintock notes, Beauvoir always hoped to convey ‘the perpetual dance of nuance and ambiguity’ as well as the ‘preposterous unpredictability in human lives’; see Anne McClintock, ‘Simone (Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand) de Beauvoir (1908–1986)’, in George Stade, ed.,
European Writers: The Twentieth Century
, Vol. 12, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990.
52
Beauvoir,
The Coming of Age
, pp. 290; 316; 319; 349.
53
Beauvoir,
Force of Circumstance
, p. 672;
The Coming of Age
, p. 5.
54
Beauvoir,
Force of Circumstance
, p. 297.
55
Ibid., p. 657.
56
Simone de Beauvoir,
The Woman Destroyed
, translated by Patrick O’Brian, New York, Putnam, 1968.
57
Reported in Deirdre Bair,
Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography
, New York, Summit Books, 1990, pp. 528; 509.
58
In ibid., p. 510.
59
Beauvoir,
The Coming of Age
, p. 348.
60
Alison Huang et al., ‘Sexual Function and Aging in Racially and Ethnically Diverse Women’,
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
57: 8 (2009), pp. 1362–8.
61
Doris Lessing,
Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography – 1949–1962
, London, Flamingo, 1997, p. 314; Natasha Walter, ‘Doris Lessing: An Unusual Feminist’,
Independent
, 18 August 2001.
62
Lessing’s autobiographies are
Under My Skin
and
Walking in the Shade
; the novels addressing women and ageing include
The Summer Before the Dark, The Diary of a Good Neighbor, If The Old Could
(the last two first published under the pseudonym Jane Somers) and, most memorably,
Love, Again
, as well as in
Alfred and Emily
. See also a characteristic short story, ‘Two Old Women and a Young One’, in
London Observed: Stories and Sketches
, London, Harper Collins, 1992.
63
Doris Lessing,
Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949
, London, Flamingo, pp. 302–3.
64
Lessing,
Walking in the Shade
, p. 262.
65
Ibid.
66
Sigmund Freud, ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’, in
On
Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis
, The Pelican Freud Library, Vol. 11, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985, p. 95.
67
Ibid., pp. 82–3.
68
Lessing,
Under My Skin
, p. 205.
69
Lessing,
Walking in the Shade
, p. 130.
70
Doris Lessing,
Love, Again
, London, Flamingo, 1997. Further page references are given in the text.
71
Will Self, ‘Young in all But Age’, Review of Lewis Wolpert’s
You’re Looking Very Well, Guardian
, Review section, 30 April 2011, p. 9.
72
Billy Gray, ‘Lucky the Culture Where the Old Can Talk to the Young and the Young Can Talk to the Old: In Conversation with Doris Lessing’, in Mana Vidal Grau and Nuria Casado Gual, eds,
The Polemics of Ageing
, Lleida (Spain), University of Lleida, 2004, p. 88.
73
Ibid., p. 97.
74
Lessing,
Under My
Skin, p. 205.
75
Doris Lessing ‘On Sufism and Idries Shah’s
The Commanding Self
(1994)’ available at
www.ishk.net/sufis/lessing_commandingself.html
.
76
Miller,
Crazy Age
, p. 28.
77
Paul Johnson and Pat Thane, eds,
Old Age from Antiquity to Post-Modernity
, London, Routledge, 1998; Edurne Garrido Anes, ‘ “Aware too late,” said Beauty as she passed.” The
Expiry Date
to be Liked and to Love: Some Medieval Views on Old Age and Sexuality’, in Brian Worsfold, ed.,
The Art of Ageing: Textualising the Phases of Life
, Lleida, University of Lleida, 2005.
78
Lindau et al., ‘A Study of Sexuality and Health Among Older Adults in the United States’.
79
A. Nicolosi et al., ‘Sexual Behavior and Sexual Dysfunctions After Age 40: The global study of sexual attitudes and behaviors’,
Urology
64 (2004), pp. 991–7.
80
Laumann, quoted in ‘Old Age “No Barrier” to Sex Life’, BBC News online, 23 August 2007.
81
Nicolosi et al., ‘Sexual Behavior’, p. 994.
82
Lewontin, ‘Sex, Lies, and Social Science’.
83
Lillian Faderman,
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in the Twentieth Century
, New York, Columbia University Press, 1991.
84
Maureen Duffy, ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold …’, quoted in ‘Older and Wiser: Carol Ann Duffy introduces poems of aging’,
Guardian
, 13 March 2010.
85
Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Medusa’,
The World’s Wife
, London, Picador, 1999, p. 40.
86
Lisa Diamond,
Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire
, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 22, 161.
87
Ibid., p. 50.
88
Adam Phillips, ‘Who’d Want to Be a Man?’,
London Review of Books
, 19 June 2008, p. 29.
89
Amber Hollibaugh, ‘2, 4, 6, 8: Who Says that Your Grandmother’s Straight: Enhancing the Lives of LGBTQ Older Adults in the Twenty-First Century’, in Joseph N. Defilippis et al., eds, ‘A New Queer Agenda’,
The Scholar and Feminist Online
10.1–10.2 (2011/2012), Barnard Center for Research on Women, available at
www.sfonline.barnard.edu
.
90
Joan Nestle, ‘Sixty and Sexy’, interview by Angeline Acain and Susan Eisenberg available at
www.joannestle.com
.
91
Joan Nestle,
A Fragile Union
, San Francisco, Cleis Press, 1998, p.10.
92
Nestle, ‘Sixty and Sexy’.
93
Joan Nestle, ‘Desire Perfected: Sex after Fifty’, in Lee Lynch and Akia Woods, eds,
Off the Rag: Lesbians Writing on Menopause
, Norwich, VT, New Victoria Publishers, 1996, p. 81.
94
June Arnold,
Sister Gin
, Plainfield, Vermont, Daughter’s Inc., I975, pp. 70, 129.
95
Ibid., p. 189.
96
See, for instance, Adrienne Rich, ‘And Now’,
Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems
,
1991–1995
, New York, Norton, 1995.
97
Adrienne Rich, ‘Memorize This’, available at
www.aprweb.org
.
98
Seamus Heaney,
The Human Chain
, London, Faber and Faber, 2011, p.12.
99
Hortense Calisher,
Age: A Love Story
, New York, London, Marion Boyars, 1996, pp. 7, 8.