I’d like to see a magazine published exclusively for women from 65 on up to as old as women live to be. It would be called Wrinkles and maybe subtitled “The Old Ladies’ Home Journal.”
Wrinkles would be edited and staffed by women over 65. It wouldn’t accept material by writers under that age and it would welcome articles by authors in their 70s, 80s and beyond.
Wrinkles wouldn’t deny the realities of old age; it would explore them.
Wrinkles wouldn’t contain the kind of age-spurning medical advice so common elsewhere. It would recognize and help us with our declining abilities, chronic illness, pain, and necessary forays into the health care system. It would acknowledge the physical insults and surprises nature visits on us when we get old.
Wrinkles would contain fashion and grooming advice that is never seen in other women’s magazines. What clothes suit us and where can we find them? What about hair styles and cosmetics? What do others do about old-lady problems that younger people deem too gross or comical to consider?
Wrinkles would be literate, honest, and original. Its emphasis would be on the discoveries of this stage of our journey, as surprising and important as any of our earlier ones. In Wrinkles we would read about attitudes, prejudices, and lessons learned; about relationships with spouses (if we still have them), children, grandchildren, and friends; about what loneliness and loss really mean after a busy life; and about what we can make of the wisdom and opportunities we have now.
There would be guidance in how to manage our possessions and the family archives in preparation for our final departure, written from our own perspective. We’d find interviews with contemporaries. There would even be fiction, with women like us as the central characters rather than as the token old people in younger folks’ lives.
And I like to think that Wrinkles would be printed on paper, a real magazine with pages to turn, no matter how computer-literate its readers might be.
(first published in 2012 Oasis Journal)