I was reading a blog post by the ever thought-provoking Amarinda Jones - http://www.totalebound.blogspot.com/ - and it reminded me of an experience at my holiday job last year. I was working with a quite attractive nineteen-year-old girl and a couple of older women. Then there was me in my thirties. The nineteen-year-old was constantly being hit on, almost to the point of harassment at times. It's not like when I was seventeen and working at the college district McDonald's either, being hit on by cute frat guys only a little older than myself. A girl would not want to be hit on by any of the men bothering my coworker. At one point, she even told one of the men how old she was when he was asking her out for drinks and he didn't care, though she was underage and he was more than twice her age.
    On one hand, I had flashbacks to my youth, which reminded me that I was once as cute and tight-bodied as this coworker. On the other hand, I, along with my older female coworkers, were all but ignored by the men at the mall, which at some level made us feel bad. We were liberated in a sense to do our jobs without being bugged, but still, we'd preened under that attention when we were young and the difference in treatment by customers starkly illustrated our increasing years.
    But really, that has nothing to do with ourselves or our value. What's really frustrating is when I hear fortyish friends are not being hired for jobs after being out of the workforce for a bit, even though they'd had great jobs with high salaries in the past, before leaving to raise kids, take care of parents or whatever.
    We should be the sum of our accomplishments, not of our wrinkle-free faces. We should never let our self-esteem suffer just because we're older. Maybe being proud and secure will help us get the jobs when we do get a chance to interview despite our experience-filled resumes that reveal our ages. We can't stay twenty-nine forever for corporate America's sake, or in our late teens for retail! We can't feel bad about that, but we do need our jobs.
    Appearance is largely superficial, it's the person inside that matters.

 

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