you can reach the light switch

keep thinking about this — more from gloria steinem’s fresh air interview:

STEINEM: …I realize more now that I’m past that stage, that 50 was a very difficult birthday because it was the end of the central years of life. But 60, which I was just entering when I was speaking then, was like entering, as I was saying, a new country. And that means that all the demands of gender that spread from something like 12 to something like 50 and are something of a prison sometimes are gone, and suddenly you’re free.

Here’s my comparison now. Remember when you were 9 or 10, and you were this independent, little girl climbing trees and saying, I know what I want. I know what I think and so on. That was before gender descended for most of us, as Carol Gilligan has pointed out in her work. After 50, you’ve theoretically, according to society, had kids, raised them, so your gender role is over. Ironically, I found by 60, you’re free again. So you’re the same person you were at 9 or 10 only now you have your own apartment. You can reach the light switch.