Books

Short essays on getting older written without either dread or forced positivity. Raffelock is good on the small daily adjustments that nobody warns you about and that no one else seems to be discussing.

Essays on being a mature woman still looking for a life of purpose while popular culture treats her as finished. Weldon is funny about invisibility without letting anyone off the hook for it. Winner of the Gilda Prize.

Gerontologist Tracey Gendron, who chairs the Department of Gerontology at Virginia Commonwealth University, argues that ageism is the most normalized of all prejudices — one that shapes how we treat others and how we see our own aging. Grounded in research but written for a general reader, the book is a clear-eyed guide to recognizing age bias and beginning to unlearn it.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette argues that aging is not a biological fate but a cultural construction — that we are “aged by culture” long before our bodies slow down. This rigorous, impassioned book gives women the intellectual tools to identify and resist the ageism that shapes how we see ourselves and each other.

Raffelock argues for a third archetype beyond maiden and mother: the woman whose creative and public life begins in earnest after fifty. Against the framing of midlife women as used up, defeminized or invisible.

Thirteen qualities Bolen argues are worth cultivating in the crone years, from a Jungian analyst who spent a career arguing that older women have archetypal authority rather than a diminished share of the young ones. A companion to her Goddesses in Older Women.

One day I woke up and there was a seventy-year-old woman in my bed. Two long essays on women and ageing from a writer who spent her sixties and seventies refusing the script. Steinem is direct about what changes, what does not, and why she found these decades freer than the ones before — the most squarely on-topic book she wrote.

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Photographer Jo Blackwell put that question to hundreds of women and photographed 166 of them exactly as they are — no make-up, no styling, no filters — each portrait paired with the woman’s own words about growing older, being seen, and letting go of unrealistic expectations. Featured by the BBC, it is not a glossy “embrace ageing” book; it is a quiet, truthful record of older faces, and an argument that every one of them is worth looking at.

Why it’s here: The portraits begin at forty, not fifty — but the project’s whole subject is the visibility and self-acceptance the second half of life demands, and its honest older faces are the point.

Jennifer L. Butz launched WonderCrone after colliding head-on with ageism at sixty, and Rebel Aging is her witty, clear-eyed reckoning with the myths women are handed about life after fifty. Part manifesto, part mirror, part marching orders, it reframes aging not as a descent but as a return — to voice, to vision, to self. Through personal stories, cultural critique, and a few well-placed shenanigans, Butz exposes how ageism shows up in our bodies, work, and relationships, and makes the case that wonder, wisdom, and purpose beat the lie of “anti-aging” every time. A rallying cry for reclaiming your edges, your joy, and your seat at any table.

Built on original doctoral research into why professional women over fifty are walking out of organizations that spent decades training them. Ryan names the triple bind of ageism, sexism and menopause without treating any of them as the individual woman problem to solve.

Award-winning writer Wendi Knox reframes aging as “becoming more of who you are, not less of what you were.” Sparked by a midlife reckoning and the symbolism of the dragonfly — which gains its wings late in life — the book offers nine “Dragonflying Lessons,” with exercises to help women escape cultural ageism and reclaim their voice and visibility.

This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism by the dynamic Ashton Applewhite is a call to action on many fronts, beginning in our minds. As Ashton writes, “This book is a call to wake up to the ageism in and around us, embrace a more nuanced and accurate view of growing older, cheer up, and push back.
What ideas about aging have each of us internalized without even realizing it? How do they play out across our lives, from office to bedroom, in muscle and memory?
What can we do, individually and collectively, to catalyze a radical age movement to make it happen?
Let’s find out.”

I first learned about anti-ageism activist Ashton Applewhite through her terrific TED talk. She also led the team that developed Old School, a clearinghouse of anti-ageism resources.

The fact that she is out there doing good work, reminding us to include ourselves in the circle of those deserving equality, makes me happy and reminds me once again how important it is for older women to write our sexy stories.

Marienau and Zelitzky have spent years interviewing women between seventy and one hundred and ten for their podcast, and this is the book that came out of it: artists, activists and entrepreneurs who are visibly not finished. Built against the assumption that the later decades are a subtraction.