The Ageing Gap

It's very often the case that women age more quickly than men. That is to say, that the process of ageing affects women's appearance sooner and more injuriously than it affects the appearance of men. As a general observation, of course, not counting the exceptions. It's why age-gap relationships where the man is older are seldom seen as age-gap relationships (Brangelina, for example), whereas in couples where the woman is older, the age-gap gets mentioned  - oh, pretty much all the time (Demi Moore and her chap when they were married, Hugh Jackman and his wife etc). Now that women are wise to this phenomenon they are taking steps to prevent it, whether by taking better care of their skin, nutrition, fitness and so on, and/or getting a little help from outside sources, whether obvious - like poor, picked-on Renée Zellweger (see previous posts) - or subtly like Julia Roberts or anyone else who can claim to have a natural look. Now it's the men who tend to age prematurely, if fine actors like James Nesbitt, Robson Green and the daddy of them all, George Clooney, are anything to go by. Clooney now looks old, there are no two ways about it. Even the glamour of his beautiful and much younger bride cannot lift him. In fact the new Mrs Clooney makes him look even older. But granted that in the normal course of things the gap in the ageing process between men and women does remain, why is it even there? Rationally, there shouldn't be a discrepancy: a year is a year, a decade is a decade, whatever the gonads. Then again, is it a rational phenomenon? Here's a little flight of fancy, my offer of a non-rational explanation for the ageing gap: it's because of the dual nature of time. Men and women are subject to the linear nature of time (a year is a year and so on), but within that linearity women are also subject to the cyclical nature of time. As seasons come and go cyclically every year, so women's fertility cycles come and go every month, twelve times a year, every year. By the time a few decades of linear time have elapsed, women have gone through maybe 450 life-and-death hormonal cycles. By the time we are released into simple linearity at the end of our fertility we have matured in a way that is disproportionate to our calendar years. And whereas there is a lot to be said for that on personal, emotional and social levels, the physical aspect of this maturity is not so welcome by us and doesn't go down well in terms of how we are perceived. In fact the non-physical aspects of this maturity traditionally haven't gone down very well either. This is why there is so much scorn, unease and even fear that greets the ordinary (non-famous) post-fertility woman. It's why we'll never be rid of the age-old spectre of the 'crone', 'a withered, witchlike old woman', so says the dictionary, from a root word meaning 'old ewe'. A few words further down the dictionary column, in contrast, we get the neutral notion of the 'crony'. It applies primarily to men and merely means 'a close friend or associate', even though it's derived from the Greek word for time (chronos).So even in terms of words the ageing process is not rational.