what makes something "old lady"?

and why older women are damned if they do, damned if they don't

Originally published in June 2023

My family is odd in its own way (is there any family that isn’t?). My mom is Jewish, the daughter of a doctor, and grew up upper middle class in Los Angeles. My father grew up in poverty in rural southern Alabama, one of 8 children, and was a good ol’ boy until he received his Marxist awakening. They met working for the same civil rights lawyer in the 70’s. 

My dad’s mom was named Voncile. She was the daughter of a sharecropper. She lived in an immaculately kept mobile home. She ordered most of her clothes from the JCPenney or Sears catalogs, which I used to love flipping through when I visited. They were mostly polyester and floral and all her pants had elastic waists. 

My mom’s mom was named Helen. We used to say she ate “like a bird”, which I now suspect was disordered eating. My mom has told me that she cared very much about playing the part of the “doctor’s wife”, but she also had her own career as an English teacher. She wore neatly tailored, class…