JODIE Moffat wants to see more older women with everyday faces and physiques and undyed hair as newscasters and TV hosts.
She wants to see more mature-aged women on boards and in parliament.
Furthermore, she wants their faces in advertising – and not just when selling incontinence pads and pensioner insurance.
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READ NOW“We are a large and powerful portion of the Australian population and we should be able to see ourselves for how and what we are,” the Rockingham book editor said.
Moffat also wants these women’s stories heard.
Teaming up with two friends – Susan Laura Sullivan and Maria Scoda – she produced a new book, Women of a Certain Age, published by Fremantle Press and comprising tales from WA women aged 40-plus of varying backgrounds.
Sullivan is a fiction writer and poet who lives in Japan after growing up in Midland.
Scoda is an experienced clinical and consultant psychologist who works in private practice in Sydney.
“Everyone has a story to tell but we don’t often get to tell it and the popular media is particularly reticent to tell the stories of older women at all, even when they are public figures,” Moffat said.
The anthology shares tales of celebration, affirmation and survival, from women who feel invisible to others embracing the unexpected freedoms of old age.
“The idea came about gradually, as I started noticing the way the world (particularly the professional world) started to treat me the older I got, pretty much depending on how I looked,” Moffat said.
“I used to joke about it and compare war stories with my similarly aged friends and peers, and my sisters, and Maria Scoda (my co-editor and close friend) said to me one day: ‘We should write a book about this.’
“We had noticed every woman we knew around our age was experiencing similar things, the gradual diminishing of presence, even very powerful women we knew.”
Women of a Certain Age is out now.
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