Yesterday I wrote about a "crime" that made me crabby -- a woman took a rock from a Yoko Ono exhibit that consisted of many, many rocks on the floor. And another thing about it made me crabby.
Here's the perp, surveillance photo courtesy of the Toronto police:
She is described as 55 to 60 years old.
Does this look like a 55-year-old woman to you? Looks more like 75 to me, or maybe 80 or 85.
Here's what some women 55 to 60 look like:
(Well, my friends in that age group don't look exactly like that, but that may be an issue of wardrobe.)
Because I am a late-middle-aged woman myself, I am particularly alert to what I see as the way society dismisses and devalues older women. Apparently in the eyes of the Toronto police, if you look old and doddery you must be (horrors) in your late 50s! I realize that if I were to be creamed by a runaway bus I would be described in the news report as "elderly," even though I think of myself as anything but.
What's up with this stereotyping? Don't any of the cops who put together this APB know a real 55- to 60-year-old woman? Or a real 80-year-old woman? Or don't they even look at women past a certain age, even if it's their own wife or mom?
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