I don't think it's sexist to suggest that women are more likely to be aware of their appearance than are men. Women seem to be acutely cognizant of the changes that age brings, while men believe that if they are color-coordinated (a rarity) they have fully managed their appearance.
In addition, men never seem to understand that age will eventually make them unattractive, or comparatively so. After all, an aging man's role model is likely to be Hugh Heffner. And when a man finds a woman attractive, he automatically assumes that she finds him equally attractive, regardless of his age, even when his jowls are reaching his chest.
Consequently, one of the terrible things that nature does to an aging man is to expand over time, and exponentially, the number of beautiful women in the world. They are everywhere. They check out groceries; on television they read, with gravity, the news of world crises; they spin the wheels and call out the numbers of the lottery drawings; they win Olympic gold; they run corporations (though at a lower salary than their male peers); they check
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I think I first noticed femininity when I was a decagenarian -- that is, when I was 10 years old.
By the way, I made up the word decagenarian, at least I think I did. It's not in Merriam Webster's online dictionary, nor is it in Webster's New World Dictionary. I wanted to try it in Scrabble, but I never could come up with enough letters. Nevertheless, I like that word. Etymologically, it probably should include all teenagers. However, since I made it up, I get to decide what it means.
When I was 10, female decagenarians constituted the whole of what could be considered beautiful. The best looking girls could play baseball, throw a football and kick a soccer ball 50 yards with either foot. They nearly always earned the best grades in class and had wonderful singing voices. They even knew how to dance without counting. Unfortunately, they were all taller than me.
As the years accumulated, the ages of beauty extended. When I was 15, the range expanded from, say, 14 to as high as 20 or whatever age the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders are.
And as each decade passed, another 10 years' production of women became beautiful.
When I was 20, I had no idea that a 70-year-old woman could be beautiful: now I awaken to that fact every day. The 14-year-old is still beautiful, but the upper end of the range is now somewhere in the 70s. What is disconcerting is that on the higher end of the curve, I am comfortably among my peers. At the lower end, I am, alas, just an old goat.
Ropa retired after 20 years with the International Division of Abbott Laboratories. His e-mail address is J.Ropa@yahoo.com.
