Words

Ages – the time it’s taken you..

The Short of It – read me.

Our age is a measure of how many years we have been alive. Other than that, much more than that, age the product of social constructions that we all apply to others and to ourselves. It is deeply ingrained, it is mostly harmful and it is bullshit. In my view we need to pause, stare at its puffed up and bloated form, stick a large pin in it and watch it fart off into the distance.

It started as a small series of photos of just me and my partner Titch. We look as we do and we behave as we do as an outcome of our lives and our beliefs, joys and pains. We try not to look or behave because of what is expected of us people who are the ages that we are now – that’s what we like to think.

Being naked in a public space, such as on-line, is difficult for most people. Nudity is a taboo and it reveals how we are unclothed – it shows our fat, bones, spots, wrinkles, stubble and all. It shows how we fit with those constructions – and it is often uncomfortable.

It is also hurdle to get over for most of us. In every instance so far, having got over it and having been naked, seems to be a source of pride, satisfaction, achievement and a moment of change for the better.

But, however much I like hanging out naked on a warm beach or with my partner, I also like to dress up. I like to wear clothes, most people do – or they are happy with not worrying about their clothes. Either way, our clothes, hairstyle and make-up say something about us and how we are responding to all of the constructions applied to us and by us.

It could anything that they feel says something about who they are, or what they are thinking or experiencing pretty much now. I’m not going to limit people to what that is – it could be a drawing, some writing, an object, possibly a sound clip (if I can sort the tech).

If you’d like to take part, see my contact page – as the images contain nudity, participants must be over 18 legally but I’m unlikely to include anyone under 20.

The Long of It – you could read me, but not until you have looked at the photos.

I was born in 1965 in Dun Laoghaire, Eire. I’m 56 now but I won’t be for long. When I was 23 I had a sinking feeling that I had, all of a sudden, become old – if stopped by the Police (fuck the Police) I’d no longer be able to get away with it because I was a (white, middle-class) youngster.

I reached puberty when I was 9 and until I was in my mid-30s, people would take the piss saying that I seemed old for my years and as if I had been born ‘middle aged’. However, since I was in my mid 40s, it seems likely that many people tend to think that I don’t ‘act my age’… my actions are how I act, they are not so closely related to my age.

Age is a proxy for so many aspects of our lives. The majority of our deep, strong and determined associations with age are not truths, they are social constructions. Our bodies, minds, behaviours and beliefs change over time but how that time links to our age is not fixed. We are continually said to be of ‘a certain age’, too old or too young to dress or be like ‘that’.

We are young and beautiful, vibrant, energised and open to new ideas – full of the joys of Spring. And we are wiser, more cautious, “considered”, wrinkled, set in our ways – in our Autumn years. And, there are many stages in between, with 20 and 30 somethings, the mid-life crisis ages, 60s are the new 50s, and we are boomers and all – the young are old before their time and the old insist on remaining youthful. And, endlessly, we set up absurd divisions between age groups – the young resentful of the old, the old fearful of the young.

I’m at one of those stages of life when my age seems to be in my mind a good deal of the time – time is racing by and I hate the notion of coasting along as these few days we have to live are precious. My kids have recently left home and I’m adjusting to not parenting as much, and my parents have died in the last couple of years. Watching my parents deteriorate, their worlds contracting and then their brains failing, fills me with dread and plans to die before I get to that sort of state. 

Unless I live to be 113, there is less time behind me than ahead of me. I have had about 36 years of life as an adult and I expect I have about 20-25 years left as an adult before my brain and body start to fuck up so much that I can no longer live how I want. And while I have always railed against the age labels applied to me and, seemingly so willingly applied by others about themselves, I’ve not really explored age as a concept. However, I started to consider age discrimination, age being one of the protected characteristic groups under the Equality Act 2010, and found myself looking at nothing much more than grim reflections.

I found that the majority of references to age are about older people in decline (or nauseatingly cheery older people saying things like ‘I’m 79 years young’), lonely, neglected, on the shelf, more inclined to vote for narrow-minded, greedy Conservative, right-wing opinions and, trotting out racist, sexist, trans and homophobic words. Occasionally, there are references to older people as still being useful and their wisdom outweighing their lack of vitality.

References to younger people are more diverse. There are the negative views of aggressive youths, noisy students and of a self-obsessed, selfie taking, snowflake generation. Contrasting with more interest in the environment, in gender issues, in welfare and equity.

There is also the whole obsession with the nearly entirely intertwined concept of beauty as almost literally being youth. The smooth gloss is mirrored with endless pressures to conform to gendered ideals of beauty – the pubescently shaven, photoshop-smooth skin and ideal marketable figure.

Or of the 6-packed hunk, tough but caring, polished muscles, square-jawed, always tall and fit. If you don’t fit you are told to diet or cut it away, or fill it or pack it with silicone or some other gloop.

In our middle years we are taunted by ourselves, by friends and family and by the media with the ever present, inevitable, loss of youth – we cling on with our fingernails as the signs of ageing iron wrinkles into our skin. So many of us retire to the sofa, slippers on feet, cats on laps. Our wardrobes and drawers burst and brim with the clothes we wore in our 20s that, if we could only shift 4 inches, we could still fit. 

We become ‘cougars’, ‘predatory pervy blokes’, red-faced, balding or blonds, mid-life crisis jokes, titters with little red sports cars and uplifts to bums, tits and blue-pilled dicks. We are most harsh to one another going on about our sagging tits, our loss of libedo, our balding heads, our dribbling incontinence and we fret about our teen children and our ageing parents… we spot that we seem to be becoming our parents… dying. Hems drop, waistes expand, frowns and downturned looks define us – we don’t dance but when we do, we dance like dads.

I call bullshit.

I’ve seen So many people start to ‘act their age’ when there has been no reason to change their behaviour other than what they and others believe and say is age-appropriate. At 23 I first heard a person of the same age saying he was ready to get married and settle down – I baulked at that then, and my views have not ‘mellowed with age’. At 29 I was told I was too old to go to a festival – and at 56, I’ve no doubt that many people think I’m both too old to wear a short skirt and also the wrong gender. Well – fuck them, fuck the certain-age police – fuck all of that – dance in whatever way you like – be queer, do queer.

Our age is the count of the number of years that we have been alive, it need not be a control or measure of how we feel or behave. I’m not at all denying that age has an impact on our bodies as, annoyingly, they do start to break and, on our minds as we have experienced more things just by virtue of having been around longer.

This piece of work is starting small intentionally. I want people to see it and to want to join and, if they don’t, I’ll know it’s just me being an oddity again.

I’m not so different though, I make comments about age. It’s hard not to as it’s so deeply rooted in the values and judgements that have been constructed for us and reinforced by us. But, as we are learning to question the constructions we have made about race, gender, sexuality and disability, we need to make age do nothing more than it should be, just a count of the number of years we’ve been alive. Age should not be what defines us – 

There’s some provisos though – as I’ve got older I’ve witnessed that many of the certainties that I had when I was younger have shifted. I may well have been determined when I’d been alive 16 years that I’d be fine to have my naked image shared, and perhaps I might still not care about it 10 years later. But, I don’t think that having been alive just that number of years, or even for at least another 4 years, that I could really consider too far into the future.

Being around longer allows us to develop a sense of time and how things that once seemed fixed tend to change. So, while I might consider adding photos of people who are over 18, I’m unlikely to do so – the bottom age limit is 20 – wow that would have infuriated me when I was 18.

A few more thoughts about the participants. By definition, everyone who is shown naked in these photos is confident about how they look, or more confident about how they look than they did before. Whatever you think about them, whether you think they look attractive, sexy, ugly, fit, unhealthy and so on – those are your thoughts based on the constructions you are applying to nothing more than images of another person who is naked and clothed. We are all sometimes naked and sometimes dressed – we all pass through the numbers that count the years that we have been alive. 

Please enjoy looking and, hopefully, join in by contacting me via my contacts page.