A lesson about getting older: Age however the hell you want to.
I was born in 1934. You do the math. I did look up online the oldest woman in the world, and the oldest one I could find was 130. So I have a new goal. I hope we’ll be rid of Donald Trump by then. [Laughs.]
Aging is a gift. Aging gracefully makes it sound as if aging is an external event and you’re supposed to age in a certain way. I think you’re supposed to age however the hell you want to. To lie about one’s age, especially for women, is to conform to the idea that women are only okay when we are seen as sexual or reproductive.
I’m not immune to society’s idea of what you should look like, but I never felt the need to have a facelift or something that hurt. I don’t want to have to do that. I want to be someone who helps assure other women that aging is a good thing because aging has been presented as being more a penalty for women than it is for men, and that’s just not true. I love it here in this world and I want to stay as long as possible.
A lesson on travel: Put yourself somewhere unfamiliar.
After I graduated from college, I was engaged and trying not to get married so it was important to go far away. There was an available scholarship to go to India, so I was lucky. India had just become independent of British rule; Gandhi was already a figure of great international hope and respect. It was actually easier to travel alone as a woman in India than it was in this country, because there were women-only cars on the railroad, for instance, or hostels where you could stay overnight that were only women. I spent the first many months living in a women’s dormitory at the University of Delhi.
Also, we spent a lot of time in a major Indian student occupation, which was sitting in coffee houses, just talking and listening and learning. That was very important, both for learning, because you’re learning about different cultures, and also for independence, because there you are on your own, hundreds and hundreds of miles from friends and family.
And I still think there’s something about traveling that requires you to be on your own and figure things out. I still fly coach. I mean, I understand that first class is more comfortable, but you’re going to get to the same place at the same time. So what’s the point? [Laughs.] I was comfortable enough, though, because I had organized with flight attendants and we kind of semi-knew each other, so if there were, say, four free seats across someplace on the plane, they would arrange for me to have those so I could lie down and sleep.
