Our flesh after fifty

WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE

CHRIS HATZIS
Eavesdrop on Experts, a podcast about stories of inspiration and insights. It’s where expert types obsess, confess and profess. I’m Chris Hatzis, let’s eavesdrop on experts changing the world - one lecture, one experiment, one interview at a time.

We live in a society swamped with images, where high value is placed on physical appearance and an association between attractiveness and youth, particularly for women.



MARTHA HICKEY
Hi, I'm Martha Hickey. I'm a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Melbourne and at the Women's Hospital.

JANE SCOTT
Hi. I'm Jane Scott and I'm the lead curator and program coordinator for the Flesh After Fifty: Changing Images of Older Women in Art.

CHRIS HATZIS
The Flesh After Fifty exhibition explores and challenges negative stereotypes of ageing while celebrating and promoting positive images of older women through art. Dr Andi Horvath sat down to chat with Professor Martha Hickey and curator Jane Scott about the exhibition and their work.

ANDI HORVATH
Martha, tell us about the biology of women in their 50s.

MARTHA HICKEY
So women in their 50s, most of us are alive in our 50s now. Our live expectancy is into our 80s. In our early 50s, most of us will experience something called menopause, which is a normal reproductive stage, marked for many women by the cessation of their menstrual periods and for also many women by hot flushes and sweats, which generally go away after a while.

ANDI HORVATH
Let's talk about the sociology then of being in your 50s. Jane, do you want to comment on that?

JANE SCOTT
Well, for me, when I met Martha and we started talking about trying to talk about the issues of growing older through the context of a visual arts exhibition. It was a bit of a no-brainer for me, because - well, not only am I a woman of 58, but also anybody who's worked in the arts sector knows the difficulty of, and lack of, representation of women in the arts and also, in particular, nudes. It's one of the great tropes of the art world is the nubile, young, gorgeous-looking woman is forever being reproduced and viewed by people as the perfect female form. But when you start thinking about and talking about representation of older women, there's just nothing there. So, for me, this project and talking to Martha about the science behind and the medical issues around older women's health, it all just fitted in beautifully as an opportunity to really explore this.

ANDI HORVATH
Martha, tell me about women's health. You mentioned the psychological issues may or may not be prevalent. Is there more of a cognitive load, pressures of life on women in their 50s?

MARTHA HICKEY
Women are amazing. Women in their 50s are often - because we're having children later than we used to, they often still have children at home or the older children can't afford to buy houses. Fifty per cent of our workforce are women. Seventy-five per cent of our carers are women, mostly older women. So, yes, women do have a lot on their plate. Women over fifty are the fastest-growing demographic in this country and will soon be, in the next 10 to 20 years, the largest demographic group. So because of the contribution of older women to the workforce, to families, to caring across generations, if we don't look after older women, our society is stuffed.

ANDI HORVATH
Women over 50 tend to be invisible. I don't see a lot of them in the media. I could probably count them on one hand. Yet, men in their 50s are everywhere. I mean, sure, we know that a lot of CEOs are male. There is definitely an invisibility about women. You actually can feel it once you are an older woman, you're no longer seen. You become invisible and you're walking past groups of men.

JANE SCOTT
But you know what's even worse is that when you do see an older woman, she's trim, taut, probably had a career as a model and she's this epitome of this - it's like the supermodel that we deal with in the media where it's completely unattainable. Just because a woman is older, she's still a supermodel, the women that they use, and when do we get to see them? Incontinence pads. Superannuation. Insurance for life insurance. I mean, it's just woeful. Why can't we have an older woman selling cars and all of the - medical things from the chemist? I mean, it's just always this young, super skinny, usually a brunette, now that I think about it, and [laughs] we just - it's just older women are wiped from all of those sorts of…



ANDI HORVATH

Is that about the male gaze and about the sexual male gaze?



JANE SCOTT
Well - and I think it's also the marketing people have clearly surveyed people and who do they trust? I think that older women fall off the list for some reason. I mean, marketers will sell you anything and have anybody represented if they think that that's actually to cut their message through. So I have to believe that they're actually doing their research, which is a huge concern that older women are not considered as great spokespeople for a whole range of items.

ANDI HORVATH
Yet the maternal archetype, even from a Jungian perspective, is something that is quite powerful.

JANE SCOTT
Absolutely. There's a miss, but we know there's a miss. We know there's something wrong with the way that we view older women, which is why we're doing this project.

ANDI HORVATH
Martha, tell me about the invisibility of women. What's your perspectives on this?

MARTHA HICKEY
So in Flesh After Fifty, we're interested in exploring this idea of invisibility and I think a crucial question is who's looking? If the visibility is about the gaze of a young man, then many women, young and old women, do not want to be under that scrutiny. When I look at my daughter, who's 20, and I see the kind of visibility that she has, including people taking photographs of her without her permission and being harassed, I'm glad that I'm an older woman.

ANDI HORVATH

It's an interesting perspective. Tell me the story of a friend of yours who's a cyclist.

MARTHA HICKEY
So we - I was cycling with some friends and one of the people is a woman over 60 actually. We cycled a certain distance and she said, that's it. I've had enough. I don't want to cycle anymore. So we talked about what we could do. We were in the country. There were no Ubers, there were no taxis available. She went up to a ute that was parked outside the pub, a young man, two children in the back, explained her circumstance and he said, yes, of course. I'll give you a lift. We reflected afterwards that our daughters who were in their twenties could not have done that and that man could not have offered those young women a lift. So we're grateful for many ways of the advantages and the relative safety that we have as older women, although no women in our society seem to be safe at the moment.

ANDI HORVATH
So there are disadvantages of being any age really. What are the advantages of being over 50, if I just said, say, three words?

MARTHA HICKEY

Money, security, confidence.

JANE SCOTT
Can't give a flying f*** anymore, doesn't matter and f*** you.



MARTHA HICKEY
Yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
[Laughs] Love it.

MARTHA HICKEY
Yeah. I'll second that [laughs].

ANDI HORVATH
So Flesh After Fifty, how did it come about and why the title?

MARTHA HICKEY
So the title came about following a conversation that I had with my friend Michelle Aung Thin who is a writer. She told me about this fabulous quote from Eve Arnold, talking about whether or not she would photograph Joan Crawford naked over 50. Eve's response was no, something happens to flesh after fifty.

ANDI HORVATH
So we're ashamed of flesh after fifty. We live in an ageist society. I mean, we cringe at the thought of seeing people who are elderly naked.

JANE SCOTT
But that’s the dilemma of this - dilemma and also delight of this exhibition and part of the project was actually taking it out and photographing - attempting to photograph 500 women over the age of 50 in the nude. We interviewed all of those women and I couldn't tell you statistically how many - I'd say - I don't know, maybe 70 per cent of the women talked about how they were very unhappy about the way their bodies had aged, which is just - we're forced into that position, I think, through all of our education and through the way that society actually reflects back to us and tell us there's something wrong with us if we have a wrinkle, if we have a bulge, if we have a dimple. So most of the women would comment and talk about the fact that they were unhappy in their own skin. But once they got that off their chest, they started to talk about how proud they were of their bodies for carrying them around, for delivering them the ability to have the life that they now enjoy.

So it was always with a mixture of I'm not happy about my body, but then, on the other hand, I am quite happy about my body. So this flesh after 50, for some people, they didn't like it, because it brought up some negatives, but there was also this other side of it too, which is whilst facing the negatives you find the positives.



MARTHA HICKEY
Just to mention how this project started, I run a menopause service and a lot of my clinical work is spent with women who are facing menopause at an early age. What I was hearing repeatedly from those young women was saying, I'm going to be an old woman. Those two words together were the worst thing in the world. Reflecting on myself and the women that I knew and the contribution of older women, I really wanted to change that message.

ANDI HORVATH
I think this is wonderful. You're actually challenging our perceptions of ageing. You're basically saying, stop the age shaming and, not only that, you're saying let's celebrate the flesh that is older and over 50.



MARTHA HICKEY
Well, there's a few things about ageing that are different from other areas of inequity. For example, ethnicity, because everybody's going to get it. So there's really no value in giving a message to somebody that they should not get older or they should not look older, because it's impossible.



ANDI HORVATH
Now, you two decided this is worth doing as an exhibition. Give us some theatre of the mind. Give us a little guided tour of the exhibition, so we can understand how you are approaching this social dialogue with people who'll visit the exhibition and those who are listening to this podcast.

JANE SCOTT
So it was really important that we had a diversity of artists and materials and perspectives. What is always delightful about curating an exhibition is that as the curator you come in with a bit of an idea about what the work will be and the artists just turn it on its head and come up with a whole other range of ways in which we can interpret this. So in selecting the artists, we went out and we got many advisors and talked to many people that were working within the industry who work with artists, but we wanted to make sure that we had both male and female artists actually producing the work, because the issue of female ageing is as big an issue for the men as it is for the women, because they are part of the story about any - the shaming or the negative attitudes towards it. We need to cut through with men as much as we do with women.

We also wanted to have some younger artists represented, so there are some recent graduates, for example, that are in the exhibition as well, just bringing those different sorts of ideas and perspectives. In terms of the media, we wanted to have all media represented. Obviously, photography became a big part of the project, but there's also sculpture and print making and fabric design, as well as video work as well. So some sound installation, so there's a full gamut of all of the different media that you would expect to see in an exhibition, but the point of view which is about celebrating and exploring what it is to be an older woman is at the core of each of the artist's perspective.

ANDI HORVATH
Give us an example of one of the artists' works.

JANE SCOTT
Well, I just this morning had a look at Sam Jinks, who is very well known for his photorealistic sculptures that he produces. He has done a fantastic, bigger-than-life-size figure of an older woman in the nude, that is quite beguiling but also in your face with the reality of what a body looks like. The other project which has really taken up a lot of our time over the last eighteen months has been working with an artist, Ponch Hawkes, who undertook to photograph 500 women in the nude from across Victoria and we also interviewed all of those women. A lot of the issues came up around whether or not you should, could or would cover your face for anonymity. We had a lot of women who came forward who talked about the fact that not even their husbands have seen them without their clothes on. Here they were modelling in the nude for everybody to look at them.

With social media now, you can't guarantee that anybody's anonymity is going to be protected, so a lot of women had to make the decision about whether or not they would cover their face or show themselves in their full glory. But what was interesting about that project was just the diversity of body types, shapes, scars, ethnicity and we were really thrilled that we got such a diverse range of women who wanted to share what it is that their bodies looked like. Greg Taylor was another artist who has a very famous piece over in MONA in Tasmania, which is the - the piece is called 'Cunts…and other conversations', which is 150 vulvas that he cast of women. We've got - 40 of those are going to be in the exhibition, but the - I mean, the conversations, it's quite an interesting title, because it really does make people start to realise the diversity in something that you had no idea.

People - you look at the first one and you go, oh my God, is that really what a vulva looks like? Wow. Then you get to the second one and you go, wow, that's so different. Who knew that there was so much variation in what we all really don't think about? Then by the time you get to number 30, you go, oh, god, I just don't give a damn. Who cares? They're vulvas [laughs]. So we're really hoping that when people come into this exhibition and they see so many older women in the nude that they're just going to say, wow, that's what older women look like. Big deal. It's not a problem. It's not an issue. It's not something we should be covering up. It's just the way people actually are. Hopefully, young people, as well as the people that have participated in the project will come away feeling much more comfortable about what older bodies look like and, as Martha said, we're demystifying, but also hopefully taking some of the fear and dread out of ageing by actually just exposing all of these fantastic bodies.



ANDI HORVATH

I love it. You're normalising ageing.



MARTHA HICKEY
So for the 500 Strong photograph that Jane's just been talking about, these 500 images of naked women over 50, the first viewing of that will be by the women themselves and a friend or partner that they might choose to invite. We felt that was a very important aspect of what we were doing, that those women had the opportunity to see first.

JANE SCOTT
The other thing, I just need to say, while we were gunning to get 500 women, we actually got something like 422 [laughs]. We were very ambitious, but it's still one of the biggest exhibitions, and we believe internationally, that has this many photographs, images, paintings, drawings of naked women over the age of 50.

MARTHA HICKEY
So I think that aspect of innovation is very important. We were really surprised when we looked around to see what other work had been done internationally, and there's really nothing. I mean, there are obviously people like Spencer Tunick who have photographed many naked bodies, but nobody has taken - moved the gaze to look at older women before.

ANDI HORVATH
How did some of these women who were photographed reinvent the way they saw their own body? What was the transformation for some of these participants? Did they consider their bodies a map of experience?

MARTHA HICKEY
We had the fantastic opportunity to listen to the stories of the women who had attended and who understand their reasons, why they wanted to be involved in this photography exhibition and particularly - so I'm talking about the 500 Strong piece - and also to understand the impact that that involvement had on their sense of self and on their families and on their views of themselves.

JANE SCOTT
Yeah. I think just that there's been quite a few women who have talked to us about domestic violence in their life and that they have chosen to actually come along and participate in this project as a way of reclaiming their body as their own space and the thing that they have control over and they can use in the way that they wish to. So we did talk to a number of women that brought those sorts of stories. We also had women that would turn up for the photoshoot and cry, because it was so confronting for them to actually take their clothes off in front of somebody else and it was so emotionally moving. Other women, honestly, I thought they were going to do a runner. I didn't think they'd go through with it. They'd get to the front door - we'd offer them drinks and snacks and chats and get them to fill in the survey and relax and meet other women that had just had their photograph taken or those going in.

There were a couple of times where I just thought, oh, she's never going to make it. She's going to bolt before she takes her clothes off. But, inevitably, everybody did and when they came out the other side of the experience, it was like this weight of the world had been lifted from their shoulders. I'm thinking this is - there's so much more to this story and this project than just creating art. It's about creating space for people to let go of some crap in their lives and that's a terrific thing.

ANDI HORVATH

I feel sad, because I can identify with the constraints of how I feel about my body and the shame that's been built around it since, well, since I started listening to advertising and social ideas that perhaps were questionable, but also not having the strength to actually question what was in the media and in advertising and that sort of thing.

JANE SCOTT
I know also when Ponch and I started working on this and we - Ponch photographed herself and then she photographed me as the starting point of the project, and then we spent hours over a course of an evening discussing how horrified we were about how our bodies looked. We thought, oh my. If this is the experience that we're having, what's this going to be like for everybody else that walks in the studio doors? So we were very mindful of the sensitive nature of this and Ponch, as a photographer, who has worked all of her life in this medium, but she's also a woman who's in her 70s, was one of the best-placed people to be - have the empathy and the understanding to produce this amazing body of work.

MARTHA HICKEY
I think taking a more broader, a broader, sociological perspective on this. We're conscious that older women potentially face dual discrimination, because they're older and because they're women.

ANDI HORVATH
Tell me more about that.



MARTHA HICKEY
Well, I think we - we're very conscious of ageism and, in an ageing society, it's unsustainable to not give full recognition and support to old people. Women are the larger proportion of older people. Maintaining their physical and mental health is absolutely paramount for us.

ANDI HORVATH

Is ageism really one of the last isms that are so detrimental to people's wellbeing? Society has attempted to tackle racism and, of course, sexism.

MARTHA HICKEY

It's a very gendered question and most of the world is run by older men, so if there is ageism, it doesn't go across societies and across genders.

ANDI HORVATH
Jane, tell us about crones and there's even a thing called croning ceremonies where we celebrate women over 50.

JANE SCOTT
Well, from an arts perspective, when I started doing the research on this and started looking back at the way in which older women were represented in art history and particularly if they were nude, it was not a positive picture. I mean, crones in the most negative sense: witches, hags. There were literally no historical nude - maybe the odd one, but it was few and far between. And, of course, this is not to deny, of course, feminism in art and once the fifties and sixties kicked in, things have really turned around in terms of what's being depicted. We're not - we can't possibly give justice to all the wonderful work that has been done in that area. But we did take a look back and just invited some academics and writers to contemplate this area and to write about it. So the catalogue comes with some terrific essays by Professor Catherine Speck and Professor Kate MacNeill, who have both written on this area, moving forward to the new work that's been produced in this exhibition.

But it - we wanted to touch upon that negative way in which women have - in the history of art have been projected as a way of giving some context as to where we've got to with this exhibition now. So it's been an interesting exercise. I mean, one of the earliest works - and we all learnt very quickly do not google naked older women, because you're one click away from drowning in porn that you can't get your computer out of for quite some time [laughs]. That was a rookie trap for all of us when we started curating this exhibition. But some of the earliest images of older women in the nude was really turn of the century pornographic images, because older women were not as worried about their reputation back then as the younger women. So that was where we started to see, okay, well, that's interesting. There are actually some images, if you want to find them. That was one of the artists that led to conversations with an artist called Patrick Pound, whose practice is all about recycling and reusing found photographic images.

So he did a lot of research to discover a whole range of different photographs, not necessarily all of those early porn, but it does exist.



MARTHA HICKEY
A couple of things. One is that this is an area where we've really benefited and grown from Aboriginal art, because in those communities and in that art space, older women, as they look normally, are represented. That's an enormous gap in non-Aboriginal art, as Jane pointed out.

ANDI HORVATH
Give me a definition of the word crones. People will have heard the word cronies. It's often used for politicians and their followers, immediate circle of followers, but what is the true meaning of the word crone?

JANE SCOTT
I would use the word crone in terms of hag. Historically it was a negative depiction of an older woman.

MARTHA HICKEY
So are there any positive words about older women's appearance? I can't think of any. There's the whole sort of cougar thing, so older women are represented as being ugly or dangerous or grasping in some way or another.

ANDI HORVATH
Yet, they have the wisdom. I mean, even old wives tales was used as a way to discredit the women that were helping women give birth.

MARTHA HICKEY
So there's a whole other discussion around the terminology and the nomenclature that's used in this space. What we've been focusing on is on the imagery, but that's really just a first step.



ANDI HORVATH
Next time we catch a glimpse of a naked older woman, what would you like us to think about?

JANE SCOTT
I'd like people to admire, to think that the person is beautiful, is sexy, is still sexually active, is intelligent, is fighting fit, got plenty of life in them and hot patooties and ready to go.

MARTHA HICKEY

Yeah. And many of us are fortunate enough to live a third or a half of our lives after menopause and for most older women it's irrelevant. I would really like young women to think getting older is not such a bad thing.

ANDI HORVATH
That's beautiful. Thank you, Professor Martha Hickey.



MARTHA HICKEY
Thank you.

ANDI HORVATH
Thank you, Jane Scott.

JANE SCOTT
Thanks, Andi.

CHRIS HATZIS
Thank you to Martha Hickey, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Melbourne, and Jane Scott, Program Manager and Senior Curator for the Flesh After 50 Exhibition. And thanks to our reporter Dr Andi Horvath. For information and updates visit fleshafterfifty.com.

Eavesdrop on Experts - stories of inspiration and insights - was made possible by the University of Melbourne. This episode was recorded on March 10, 2020. You’ll find a full transcript on the Pursuit website. Audio engineering by me, Chris Hatzis. Co-production - Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Eavesdrop on Experts is licensed under Creative Commons, Copyright 2020, The University of Melbourne. If you enjoyed this episode, review us on Apple Podcasts and check out the rest of the Eavesdrop episodes in our archive. I’m Chris Hatzis, producer and editor. Join us again next time for another Eavesdrop on Experts.