The term ‘invisible woman’ refers to the feeling many women have that they lose social value as their ability to attract the male gaze fades with age. But do older women disappear in church, as well as in society? And how might a woman’s spirituality change as she moves through her second half of life? Cynthia and Susan explore their own experiences and those of listeners in this conversation about the impact of aging on women’s church lives and personal faith.

Notes & Quotes:
The Invisibility of Older Women, by Akiko Busch, The Atlantic, 2/2019
Sending Older Women Out to the Hall to Wait, by April Young-Bennet, The Exponent II, 5/20/2021
The Mythology of Karen, by Helen Lewis, The Atlantic, 8/2020
Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence, by Diana Butler Bass
Gray Area Comic on Fb, by Susan M. Hinckley
Club Zero by the Go-Gos
Young Children Are Terrible at Hiding — Psychologists Have a New Theory Why, by Henrike Moll and Allie Khalulyan, The Conversation, 11/17/2016


“The invisible woman might be the actor no longer offered roles after her 40th birthday, the 50-year-old woman who can’t land a job interview, or the widow who finds her dinner invitations declining with the absence of her husband. She is the woman who finds that she is no longer the object of the male gaze—youth faded, childbearing years behind her, social value diminished.” —Akiko Busch

“Epithets linked to women have a habit of becoming sexist insults; we don’t tend to describe men as bossy, ditzy, or nasty. They’re not called mean girls or prima donnas or drama queens, even when they totally are.” —Helen Lewis

“If the gaze of others wanes……one might choose to “acquire instead a deepened inward gaze, or intensify our observation of others, or evolve alternative means of attention-getting which transcend sexuality and depend, as the mentors of my youth taught me, upon presence, authority, and voice.” —Akiko Busch

“When the women of the world take on words for themselves, when we seize our sacred texts and search them for truth, for wisdom, for strength. To interpret our traditions for ourselves. Not to submit, but to claim authority and look it up for ourselves, to do that which we know to be beautiful and joyful and just. Women with the power of words can change the world.” —Diana Butler Bass

 “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” —Desmond Tutu

“It seems like young children consider mutual eye contact a requirement for one person to be able to see another. Their thinking appears to run along the lines of ‘I can see you only if you can see me, too’ and vice versa. Our findings suggest that when a child ‘hides”’by putting a blanket over her head, this strategy is not a result of egocentrism. In fact, children deem this strategy effective when others use it.

Built into their notion of visibility, then, is the idea of bidirectionality: Unless two people make eye contact, it is impossible for one to see the other. Contrary to egocentrism, young children simply insist on mutual recognition and regard.” — Henrike Moll & Allie Khalulyan