fancy. Just elegant. Her daughter and son-in-law are coming home for the weekend and bringing the grandchildren. Her brother will be there, along with a colleague from Italy. And of course, our elegant femme d’un certain âge has invited her sister, the architect, who lives in Toulouse, but is visiting Paris for business.
So you can see, the party is quite a mixed bag, and intergenerational. This is one of the secrets of Frenchwomen. They don’t just pal around with women their own age, but they enjoy the company of lots of different people—young, old, male, female, urban, rural, French, and non-French. And they enjoy being a mentor. They don’t hide the fact that they’ve lived and learned and traveled and have had a wide range of experiences.
Our femme doesn’t fuss over the dinner party. She’s prepared a traditional French cassoulet (it was her mother’s recipe) earlier in the day or the day before and since she’s purchased the bread and the dessert, now it’s just a matter of making a salad, putting out the cheese for the dessert course, and chilling the champagne and opening the wine.
Imagine her arriving home. She opens the door to the courtyard, her high heels making a pleasant clicking sound on the cobblestone, and then she quickly makes her way up the three flights of the winding circular staircase. If we were invisible and could observe her unnoticed, this is what we would see: she takes off her sunglasses, her scarf, her coat, and we see her face for the first time. Yes, our French femme d’un certain âge is what we would call “middle-aged.” But she is so much more than this. Yes, there are crinkles around her eyes. Obviously, she’s laughed and cried many times in her life. Oh, and there’s the slight parenthesis lines framing her mouth. All those smiles. Thousands of them. Her hair might be colored a rich chestnut and then again, it might be artfully streaked with silver. If our femme is from the Left Bank and owns a gallery, she may have colored her hair a shocking shade of red. She wears a classic black dress, but it is adorned with the most exquisite jewelry—each piece holds a memory, an experience. There is the big silver bangle from her trip last year to Morocco. There
Her apartment? It’s filled with fresh flowers and original art. Not necessarily expensive art—but beautiful and occasionally quirky pieces created by family and friends or from a favorite artist that she’s been collecting for years.
That’s really the key to the femme d’un certain âge. History and experience. She’s not afraid to show you that she’s lived. Really lived. She’s traveled. She’s known many, many people. She’s lived a full life and continues to do so. She doesn’t dress like she’s twenty, because well, why would she want to? Why would she want to dress or act as if she does not possess all that knowledge and experience the world has given her? She’s proud of the fact that she has lived—truly lived—that she’s seen so much and that her life continues to unfold before her in a most interesting way. And more than this—she’s lived long enough to know how to handle life’s little and not-so-little upsets. These days, there’s not much that unravels her. She knows who she is. She knows her powers, her gifts, her limitations, and her weaknesses. She knows how to take in stride life’s little disappointments, as well as the bigger demands of being a grown-up in this world.
And you know what? All this makes our femme d’un certain âge very, very sexy. What she gives up in terms of a youthful, dewy-eyed innocence, she gains in elegance, style, sophistication, and wisdom.
I talked with one gorgeous femme d’un certain âge who lives in Paris. Her name is Micheline Tanguy and she owns her own company as a personal and professional image consultant. She’s an expert in style, body image, and how to communicate confidence. When I asked her to tell me what is the Frenchwoman’s secret to beauty and elegance, she said it’s not simply one thing. Rather, it’s a totality of things, such as how she stands up, how she walks, the way she holds her handbag. She told me:
It means being attractive for yourself. We do our best to reach this aim in our daily life. I must confess, it’s not only about appearance. It’s also about self-esteem, self-confidence, respect, and love for ourselves. It’s about knowing what we want . . . and self-respect.
Yes, self-respect.
Go, Cougars!
The truth is, no matter where you live—even in France—it’s not easy getting older, but this is especially true for women in America. All around us, we are bombarded with daily images of beautiful young women—or should I say girls. These young, long-legged, smooth-skinned creatures grace the pages of our fashion magazines, star in our movies, and even have their own reality television shows—as if we really care whether Pretty Wild Girls are going to get arrested this weekend. True, occasionally, you will see a Helen Mirren or a Meryl Streep or a Susan Sarandon at the Oscars and everyone will ooh and aahh, pronouncing how fabulous they are and how gorgeous they look . . . for their age! But these beautiful women are the exception and not the rule. And so, if you are a woman of a certain age, it’s easy to grow discouraged and begin to believe that unless you have been anointed as “the beautiful older woman of the year”—the singular example that we are not an ageist society—it’s easy to just give up.
On the other hand, we now have “cougars.” Yes, predatory older women who wear a lot of leopard print and supposedly go after younger men. You will seldom find an older woman who describes herself as a cougar unless she’s making a little joke. Rather, it’s the young men who are looking for hot, older women who have come up with this term. (Although, we should note that a recent French survey found that fully 90 percent of women over fifty in France say they are sexually active.)
You see the problem here: We are being defined by someone else—the media, or men on the prowl, or someone who wants to sell you something. Wrinkle cream, perhaps? Or maybe we’re being sold something a little more nefarious. Perhaps we’re being sold the idea that it’s okay to be an older woman, as long as your main interest is still finding and pleasing a man.
With all these messages coming at us every day, it’s difficult to really see ourselves, as we really are right now. No, you may not be young, but you’re not finished yet, either. In fact, I would like to propose that you are actually just beginning.
This is because, as we grow older, our true selves emerge. But more than this, what we might lose in youth, we gain in confidence. Not the false bravado of a wild twenty-something, but the true power of a woman who has lived and learned. That’s the power of Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, and our famous French femmes—Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve, and Isabelle Adjani.
How to Save Your Life
Last fall in the town of Valence d’Agen, I followed a gorgeous older woman walking around the farmers’ marketplace. She was wearing high heels and carrying a wicker basket for her purchases. No, she wasn’t a “cougar.” She certainly was not trying to act younger than she really was. In fact, rather than denying her age, she seemed to be reveling in the benefits of being une femme d’un certain âge. This particular woman was wearing a pair of interesting eyeglasses and some artful jewelry. Oh, and of course, she was wearing a scarf. It was very colorful and loosely draped around her shoulders. I loved watching her walk from market stall to market stall. I stood for a moment to witness how she picked up one perfectly ripe red tomato, held it for a moment in the palm of her hand as if weighing it, and then brought it up to her nose and inhaled deeply. After this, she chatted with the farmer for several minutes, laughed over some shared story, and then, with the help of this farmer and friend, made
