Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.At a cocktail party recently, waiting for a speech to start, I had a brief conversation with a woman that seemed to follow a thread I’d been thinking about for months. As we sat together in the shade, I asked how her summer had been, and she mentioned celebrating a milestone birthday — she had turned 60 this year.I’ve been thinking lately about how women navigate the different stages of their lives, and asked the woman how she felt about it. She confessed that she’d often downplayed her birthdays in the past because she had mixed feelings about getting older. But she had chosen to approach it differently this year because she was looking forward to this new decade. Her forties had been challenging, her fifties had been great, and she was hoping life would just keep getting better. She leaned towards me with a smile and said, “If a 59-year-old woman is running for the US presidency, who knows what I myself might do in the coming years.” I smiled broadly and wished her an incredible start to her new decade. Since then, I’ve kept thinking about howwomen consider the middle and later years of their lives. I realise that much depends on one’s specific circumstances, but I wish there were more public conversations about how women can continue to thrive, create, expand and shift the world even as their own worlds change. I was in Venice this summer, where Giorgione’s painting “The Old Woman” (c1506) hangs at the Gallerie dell’Accademia. It is a portrait of a woman wearing a pink tunic with a white shawl over one shoulder. Her age is anyone’s guess, given the historical period. But whether she was 40, 50 or 60, the point is that she was considered old.She looks at the viewer as if blaming us for her pitiful appearance. Strands of thinning, messy hair fall from a loose-fitting white cap. Her mouth is slightly ajar and through missing teeth it’s as though she’s on the verge of saying something to us. In her right hand she holds a piece of paper that reads “col tempo”, which means “with time”, and points towards her chest. We will all be as she is in due time. Old. She is not only accepting of this stage of her physical life, she seems to be proudly claiming itThe painting feels emblematic of a long-standing and problematic view of older womanhood. An aged woman seemingly undone, struggling to offer the world anything comprehensible. We may no longer paint women like this, but so much about our culture suggests we still believe women lose their truly generative energy beyond a certain age. Yet don’t we all know many women who have had career shifts and achieved laudable things in their fifties, sixties and beyond. I could name several. Of course, much depends on the specific circumstances of one’s life, including things not in our control. But I still believe that whenever anyone embraces their life and believes in their own value and worth, there are ways to continue to grow and blossom and to encourage purpose and expansion in the lives of others.I love the self-portrait that Alice Neel made in 1980, when she was 80 years old. The artist sits on a blue and white striped armchair completely naked except for the glasses on her face, a paintbrush in her right hand and what looks like a wiping cloth in her left hand. She’s sitting on the edge of the chair, her head held high as she stares straight at the viewer. What could be a posture of vulnerability seems instead to be one of confidence and self-awareness. Her breasts sag against her stomach and we see the swollen flesh at her ankles. Her hair is completely white. But she is not only accepting of this stage of her physical life, she seems to be proudly claiming it. The paintbrush is symbolic of her creative life, the vitality and fertility she still possesses as an artist, someone who still labours and births new creations.It is a defiant and unapologetic painting and provokes us to think about how we regard women in this season of their lives. I like to think the work is an invitation to other women to consider how we see and understand ourselves, regardless of what society might say. What parts of our identity should we cling to and how do we learn to narrate our own lives as we grow?The 2017-18 painting “A Solitary Pursuit” by Nigerian-American artist Toyin Ojih Odutola has a powerful and commanding air. An older black woman with a white Afro and dark-rimmed glasses sits in the driver’s seat of a pink convertible. She wears a white button-up shirt, one elbow resting on the window rim. The roof of the car is pulled back and we can see that she’s in the middle of a vast landscape. She gazes towards us but not at us: we are not the centre of her attention, though she is the centre of ours.I love this image because it suggests such self-possession. Sitting in the driving seat with a seemingly clear estimation of herself, she’s moving her life in the direction she wants, and the open expanse of land suggests there are still possibilities for her. This past week I attended the DVF Awards, a ceremony established by Diane von Furstenberg and the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, to celebrate women who are using their lives to promote justice, equality and care for others. It was inspiring, powerful and beautiful to be in a room with generations of women, from their twenties to their seventies, supporting and encouraging one another. As I looked at them, I thought about what power a woman gains from living life on her own terms, regardless of when the world thinks her time might be up.enuma.okoro@ft.com Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
