By Michael Talibard
I LIKE this new word I have found: Menoporsche. It can be used to denote a rather flashy car of any make that is bought by a middle-aged man who wants to feel young and to deny the decline of his masculinity.
This is a rather common phenomenon: my father-in-law, normally a staid and sensible medical man, went through it. His car was affectionately known in the family as the “yellow peril”.
The articles I write here are supposedly all on the theme of age, not gender, but sometimes the two issues get themselves intertwined: the menoporsche is an example of that. I don’t think many women deal with their menopause in quite the same way.
Now I need to put in an aside. I have just used the word gender, but why that one? It calls for some discussion. There is a film (quite a good film) called On the Basis of Sex (2018). This tells the story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who eventually became a Supreme Court Justice after years of battling against sex discrimination in the US.
My point here is about language. There was a time when “gender” was found only in our grammar books. French nouns were of masculine or feminine gender for no good reason that I could ever see. Then “gender” acquired a new meaning: whatever was determined by biology could be called sex, but anything of that nature determined by society was to be called gender. This always seemed to me a very useful distinction, even if “gender” became over-used.
Then, more recently, has come a silly change, whereby so many people are embarrassed even to use the word sex, so that it is routinely replaced by gender, and that useful distinction is in danger of being lost.
The Ruth Ginsburg film makes use of the word sex in ways that are entirely correct for its context. Why can’t we stick with that?
What has this to do with age? Well, it’s just that those of us who have seen and followed these changes in the language, and who regret the recent impoverishments, are all getting long in the tooth now. We cling to an earlier vocabulary.
So, back to my first topic. Whatever your sex or gender, I think the menopause is usually an undisguised blessing. Yes, really. Lust is not entirely extinguished, but that particular tyranny loosens its grip, leaving one with a little more freedom to pursue other goals.
In Henry 4 Part 2, Falstaff does not understand this, as we see in his antics with Doll Tearsheet. He becomes ever more ridiculous, and Shakespeare rightly mocks him. As Poins remarks: “Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?” But poor old Falstaff is puzzled and saddened by his loss. Let’s not emulate him.
So much for fiction. There is an even sadder example of this particular mental illness from the same era, and it’s a factual one. I refer to Queen Elizabeth I in her white make-up, and observed by the Spanish ambassador thus: “She kept the front of her dress open, and one could see the whole of her bosom, and often she would open the front of this robe as if she were too hot. On her head she wore a great reddish-coloured wig, with a great number of spangles of gold and silver. On either side of her ears hung two great curls of hair, almost down to her shoulders and spangled. Her bosom is somewhat wrinkled but, lower down, her flesh is exceeding white and delicate. As for her face, it appears to be very aged. It is long and thin, and her teeth are very yellow and unequal, compared with what they were.” Oh, Elizabeth, shame on you.
A parallel for Falstaff or Elizabeth is the Thomas Mann character Aschenbach. You probably know him best, as I do, played by Dirk Bogarde in the Visconti film Death in Venice, with its gorgeous Mahler soundtrack.
Aschenbach is too old to fall in love all over again, yet he does, and he begins to doll himself up with rouge and talc, until the sun melts all that; and then before long he dies of cholera. It seems we are supposed to feel compassion for him, but I’m sorry, I just can’t. Where was his dignity?
Talking of the ridiculous, I found online an article headed 10 Bizarre Things People Do to Look Younger. The first four were Urine Baths, Fecal Facials, Semen Scrub and Snake Massages. I couldn’t bear to read it. People don’t really do these things, do they? Surely that is just cheap journalism. I do hope so.
It is a real shame when age loses all dignity by yearning for youth. So no menoporsche. Let’s just be the age we are, shall we?
Michael Talibard, who is now in his 80s, is a retired teacher and former head of English at Victoria College. He founded the Jersey branch of U3A and was its chairman for 20 years.
