THE COLOUR PURPLE

Choices can be tiny acts of rebellion that defy aging

Studies show that most older people feel satisfied with their lives, and are in fact happier than younger people. But it's also true that anxiety and depression are a factor for seniors, who have a lot thrown at them. Liane Faulder

I have purchased new eyeglasses. They are, hmmm, shall we say — oversized. Also black.

As a woman whose eyeglasses routinely ran the gamut from dull to boring, my new frames are a departure. They make me feel bold. I can hardly stop looking at my face in my new glasses. At the same time, the new glasses remind me of that poem by Jenny Joseph, written in 1961 and titled Warning.

“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple. With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me,” are the opening lines of the poem, which celebrates women as they embrace the freedom that comes with aging. In my 30s, that poem and all it stood for made me uncomfortable. I saw clutches of older women gathering over glasses of wine in restaurants, wearing red hats and purple scarves in honour of the poem, and looked away. What did they have to giggle about? They were wrinkled and purple was an ugly colour. So firm was my resulting distaste for the colour, that I couldn't bring myself to join Purple Thursdays in the newsroom, which saw colleagues wearing purple shirts or ties each and every week and then posting joyful group selfies. I still eschew the colour purple. But something in me wriggles inside, like a puppy, when I put on my giant black glasses.

“Look at me!” I scream, but just in my head of course. “Or don't! It matters not. Because I have black glasses.”

The black glasses feel like a tiny act of rebellion, a defiant gesture in the face of, oh, I don't know — my mother being in a nursing home, a selection of runaway moles freckling my body and a generalized fear of the future.

Be gone, ye harbingers of death and decay, for I am wearing oversized glasses. The black frames feel at the same time like a new suit of armour and a gesture of self-love. In our 60s, both of these things feel essential.

Studies show that most older people feel satisfied with their lives, and are in fact happier than younger people. But it's also true that anxiety and depression are a factor for seniors, who have a lot thrown at them. People they love die, their social circles diminish, money may be tight. Bodies betray on a regular basis, in ways large and small.

What to do? There's the obvious stuff — eat well, exercise often, learn new things to keep the brain sharp. But what we wear and how we look (at least to each other) is also important. It may be challenging for older people to feel good in a pair of Lululemon pants. But there is nobody — male or female — who can't benefit from a pair of great glasses or vintage boots.

Have you noticed there are older women styling and colouring their grey hair with the same abandon as American fashion designer Betsey Johnson? Her youthful élan (she's now 80) is inspiring and might even have a spillover effect.

Could pink pigtails lead to other childish pursuits? What if such fashion statements pushed us to do more of what we wanted, and less of what we should?

Recently, with a fridge drawer of vegetables clamouring to be made into soup, my glasses and I decided to lie on the bed in the spare room, where the afternoon sun could warm our bones. Then we read a novel about a seance.

Don't worry. I have not started to, in Jenny Joseph's words, “gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells and run my stick along the public railings.” But it's out there.

Just the other day, while waiting in line to purchase olives, I spied another woman about my age wearing big black glasses.

I tried not to stare, turning my gaze instead to her shopping basket to imagine the reckless selection of gooey cheese and charcuterie inside the staid-looking butcher-paper packages. I wanted, in the worst way, to ask if she would like to join me for a glass of wine and giggle about knee braces. But that felt like the sort of odd thing that only a woman wearing purple would do, so I held back. For now.