Older women face a rude awakening upon divorce: we feel like we have ‘depreciated in value’ since we were last on the market

Am I plankton? Why older women feel they're at the bottom of the food chain

It used to be a joke between my husband and me.

“If you’re ever going to leave,” I said, “at least do it while I’m still reasonably young and can find someone else.”

“Sure – let me make sure I coordinate that to suit your timeline,” he’d quip back. This would usually be followed by some sort of reassurance that he had no interest in divorce.

Of course, the key piece I was overlooking is that people don’t necessarily schedule leaving their marriages – not years in advance, anyway – and so my husband didn’t leave until he was good and ready. Unfortunately, he wasn’t good and ready until I was 46 years old.

That’s when I read the article about the plankton generation.

“It says single women aged 45 and older are barely visible and at the bottom of the food chain for dating and relationships,” I sniveled into the phone to a close friend, reading aloud from the blog I had found.

“I’m plankton,” I cried, envisioning a massive sea of sad, ageing lady-plankton, swept along almost imperceptibly by a fickle tide, headed straight toward a washed-up fate.

There are few things that will jolt anyone out of their comfort zone more violently than the abrupt end of a long marriage. For divorced older women, what makes this harder is the rude awakening that we have depreciated in value since we were last on the market. We have not only lost what we had (marriage, financial stability), we have arguably lost the tools needed to replace it (youth, beauty).

It’s kind of like that saying about giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish; we have lost our original fish, and also have become really terrible at fishing. (Of course, that might be because we’re plankton.)

We have lost our original fish, and also have become really terrible at fishing

In the world of online dating, a man’s “desirability” apparently peaks at age 50, while a woman’s tops out at 18. And in a recent study, researchers sent out fictitious résumés for job applicants categorized as young (29-31), middle-aged (49-51), and older (64-66). For both genders, the callback rates were lower for older applicants, but the researchers found robust proof that older women were less likely to be hired. There was far less age discrimination against men.

The reason? The researchers point to studies suggesting that “physical appearance matters more for women” and that women are perceived to diminish in attractiveness with age more precipitously than men.

The anonymous author of the plankton blog, which describes the travails of looking for love after 45, knew these problems well. “I may live until I am 90,” she wrote, “but a sort of death has already come.” Ouch.

Yet I couldn’t deny the ring of truth in her words. At the grocery store, at the airport, at the beach, I saw that I was either a complete nonentity or just a nice, harmless middle-aged lady, an extra on the periphery of the real action. I found myself waiting, apparently planktonlike, for a bartender to serve several young, pretty girls who had gotten there after me. The guy finally acknowledged my inconvenient existence with one of the cruelest words a woman can hear.

“Ma’am?”

It even happened in encounters with the law. I fully acknowledge that as a white person, I have little concept of what a truly negative interaction with a police officer is like. However, as a bad driver I have had more than my share of motor vehicle stops, and in my younger days I may have turned on the waterworks once or twice when pulled over by a cop. In the plankton era, this was of dubious efficacy.

“Oh, no. I’m so sorry, officer,” I said, my tone both pleading and deferential. Tears of embarrassment welled up in my eyes like old friends. “I’m running late for my nephew’s hockey game. I promised I would be there …” I looked up at the face looming above my car window. When had police officers gotten so young?

I may have tried to bat my eyelashes. The young officer squinted at me as though I were having a neurological event.

“License and registration please, ma’am,” he said, clearly unmoved by my plight. You have the right to remain invisible, I thought.

In the months following my separation, I barely had time to panic about my bleak dating future before I had to reckon with my financial future.

In job ads, I couldn’t help but notice phrases like “ideal for a recent college graduate”.

“You certainly have a lot of … experience,” I was told during one interview. The young woman interviewing me said experience like it was an infectious disease. “Which is great,” she hastily added, before never contacting me again.

I ended up returning to a job I’d had several years before, working with people young enough to be my kids. I accepted that I would simply have to suck it up and deal with this minor indignity.

On my first day, the receptionist, who had been there during my first stint at the company, raised her eyebrows at me by way of greeting.

“Jennifer? Is that you?” she said. “Wow. It’s been a long time.”

It was somewhere around this point that I began panic-spending.

I got a costly hair-defrizzing treatment. I got a microdermabrasion treatment to blast layers of dead skin off my face. I got fashionable clothes for work and my hypothetical social life. I put whitening products on my teeth that made them hurt when I drank coffee. I joined a gym, although I refused to be upsold on a personal trainer. (As a walking midlife crisis, I was the embodiment of the personal trainer demographic.)

At one financial low point, when I wanted a nice dress to wear to a holiday party, I donated my plasma for the extra cash

It didn’t take long for me to notice that I was spending entirely too much on nonessential items that felt indispensable. A month of splurging left me barely able to pay the bills. At one financial low point, when I wanted a nice dress to wear to a holiday party, I donated my plasma for the extra cash. So, yes, I literally have a dress that I paid for in blood.

Of course it costs to beautify, but it might cost if you don’t. While women reach their highest career earnings at 44, according to the compensation specialists PayScale, men don’t reach their apex until 55. This leveling off for women happens to coincide almost exactly with the plankton blogger’s “invisibility” age. Women should take care not to look too good, though; attractive women have been found to be perceived as less trustworthy and honest.

I’m no scientist, but it’s obvious even to me that despite the evolution of the body positivity movement, the intersection of advanced age and womanhood remains a dirty secret we must pay to keep buried.

The day after the Super Bowl, the internet was abuzz about how gorgeous Jennifer Lopez (50) and Shakira (43) looked at the half-time show. But they looked gorgeous because they looked younger than they are.

When Keanu Reeves was photographed with his 46-year-old girlfriend, Alexandra Grant, who had grey hair and otherwise looked about her age, the internet melted down. A wave of congratulations flowed in Reeves’s direction, as though he deserved praise for dating a woman his age. Actually, he is nine years older. It seems we have reached a point where, in Hollywood at least, failing to look 20 years younger than you are is a subversive act.

As for me? I’m doing my job as competently as I can without worrying about being excluded from millennials’ happy hours. It’s a job, not the entirety of who I am. I’m also coming to terms with the fact that no one is going to mistake me for a college student again, no matter how much I invest.

Not long ago, I got pulled over by the cops again. At first, I felt that familiar wave of panic, amplified by knowing I could no longer rely on my standby tactic. Then I realized I wasn’t a kid trying to get off the hook. I was a full-grown adult who could handle a ticket. I was a woman, not a girl, and occasionally, I had begun to see, there is some dignity that comes with that.

“Here you go, officer,” I said, handing the near-embryonic patrolman my license, registration and insurance with a smile.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and smiled back.