TODAY'S VIEWPOINT
No county for old women
RHETA GRIMSLEY JOHNSON

I've had the suspicion for years, but only now, with the help of four dozen magazines -- a real duke's mixture -- am I realizing how little regard this culture has for the older woman.

No country for old men? Please. If this is no country for old men, as Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers have revealed, think about us women.

This is really, really no country for old women.

Old women, to paraphrase a witticism, have to do everything old men do backward and in high heels -- including getting older.

Women generally spend a lifetime avoiding scary obstacles. By the time they reach an advanced age, women have fended off date rape, endured childbirth and banged about on glass ceilings. They have performed as multitasking single mothers and clownpainted juggling acts for decades.

Old women are tough.

But they get no respect. Whether it's running for president or hiring a plumber, let's just say women face extra challenges. They must fight for every inch of their high mileage. And, if smart, they must look good doing it.

I received a notice from my creditcard company recently. I was about to lose all the airline miles I'd carefully toted up by making frivolous purchases. The miles/points would count for naught, but, if I acted quickly enough, I could redeem them for magazine subscriptions instead.

So now, every day the mailbox is full of glossy, depressing magazines, everything from Sports Illustrated to Self. In case you're wondering, my choices were somewhat limited.

I've had the suspicion for years, but only now, with the help of four dozen magazines -- a real duke's mixture -- am I realizing how little regard this culture has for the older woman.

"When the ---- did 39-year-old women get to be so sexy?" asked Esquire on a recent cover. The magazine writer is shocked, shocked to find attractive women -- he rhapsodizes over supermodel Rachel Hunter, movie stars Catherine Zeta-Jones and Jennifer Aniston -- at 39.

Maybe next year he'll discover 49.

Old women are anathema in the U.S., unlike, say, France, where you routinely see sexy partners of approximately the same age, both with gray hair, promenading the boulevards of Paris. Think of glamorous French movie stars and you think Catherine Deneuve, a classic vintage.

Ah, France. Now there's a country for both old men and women. (And, yes, I know all about the new French president and his young beauty of a bride. In reaching out to the U.S., maybe Sarkozy is adopting Donald Trump-ish habits in the marital department.)

In the sort of predawn exercise that sometimes helps this older woman fall back to sleep, I recently tried to think of female substitutes for the male presidents of my lifetime.

For instance, why not Katherine Hepburn instead of Ronald Reagan as a seasoned, mediocre actor to rule the land?

Barbara Jordan had the moral timber of a Jimmy Carter, plus more authority. And, if the fates had been much kinder, we might have seen Texas Gov. Ann Richards in the Oval Office instead of Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

I can't say exactly where a President Richards would have spent trillions of dollars, but betcha it would not have been in Iraq. It might have been on health care, or schools, or infrastructure, or all of the above. Instead of rebuilding a country we'd obliterated, a President Richards might have rebuilt the Katrina-devastated coast.

That's the kind of womanish thinking that often gets me in trouble. Daydreams, like everything else, get more outlandish with age. Then I wake up and smell the coffee.

After all, this is no country for old women.