The Older Woman and the Heron
On The Boy and the Heron and standing at the threshold of cronedom
Image from Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron
At the weekend I took my daughter to the cinema to watch Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. The film is the story of Mahito, a young boy struggling to come to terms with his mother’s death. When his father remarries, Mahito is sent to live with his young, pregnant stepmother Natsuko - who is also his aunt - in a country house with a creepy tower. The house is staffed by a bevy of old women with hunched backs, warts, wrinkles, droopy jowls, and swollen noses. They speak in excited cackles, cooing over wartime luxuries, tinned fish, and tobacco, while nubile Natsuko glides about offering tea and cake.
It is not a new look. From childhood I was – as we all have been - conditioned to associate the older woman with the image of the crone. It is upsetting, but it is also amusing to see how little this stereotype has changed in the last forty years. At 83, Miyazaki is by no means young, nor his films ‘of the moment’, but Studio Ghibli remains cutting edge. There are few – if any – animation houses that have created and retained such a lastingly inspirational aesthetic and perspective.
As a long-time Ghibli fan and believer in imperfection, I will forgive them their lofty and godlike old man character and their cast of stumpy little hog-like old women. I will also wonder why a film that took so long to make didn’t address this? Is it impossible to create a fantastical, fairy-tale world in which old women are wise, elegant, and funny? In an age such as this, while careful notice is rightly being taken towards representation, how did such an obvious depiction of the wizened old hag slip past the gender and diversity consultant? Did Studio Ghibli argue that this parade of trolls is essential to the story?
As with many things, my annoyance at this oversight probably speaks more about me personally than I care to first admit. The film was remarkable, and not because it is the first time I have seen – or indeed laughed at – an unattractive older woman on screen. In fact, when I watched Spirited Away with the same daughter about six years ago, it didn’t even occur to me to write an article chastising its makers for their portrayal of the ghastly Yubaba.
The difference is not so much Studio Ghibli – their latest film is (thankfully) much that you would expect a Ghibli film to be. It is astonishingly beautiful, lyrical, and thought-provoking. The thing that is most changed, however, is me. As I approach the one-year anniversary of my breast cancer diagnosis, I look at myself in the mirror and I newly see: an older woman.
This transition has, for me, come about almost ridiculously quickly. There has not been a slow progression towards greyness or a gradual detox from oestrogen. When my hair regrew after eight cycles of chemotherapy, it turned from dark brunette to silver, and curly, like my paternal grandmother. In some shocking development, the Taxol turned my big toenails thick and black. A week or two into hormone therapy, I discovered my bones are now creaky, crunchy, and require me to limber-up on waking.
I joke I am a ‘silver fox’ now, and I am determined to keep back the belly fat with my new ‘cancer survivor’ minimum exercise regimen of three swims and an hour of yoga a week. I do not dislike my new hair colour, nor am I not amazed and intrigued by its newfound kinkiness. Still, the carefully-managed pride in my new look can take a bashing.
The other day, a friend of my youngest daughter asked me how old I am. In twelve years of parenting, this is the first time a child has ever asked my age. I replied ‘41’, and the child looked surprised – ‘My mum is 48!’ she said. I could only assume her amazement was due to the fact of my grey hair, of which her mum has none. It dawned on me that not everyone surveying my new look thinks it bold, or chic, or a big improvement on being entirely bald. For some, it just says: you are old.
So here I am, a 41-year-old woman on the cusp of cronedom, and I’m not sure what I resent, or am most proud of, about this fact. Some days I look at my body and I think, hell Chloë, given what you just went through, that’s not half bad. I take relish in sometimes being as fast, occasionally faster, than young men swimming laps in the pool. I show off my short, grey hair with satisfaction and gratitude, knowing exactly how cold I feel without it. I apply mascara, feeling ecstatic to have eyelashes. But I also know that my beauty regime is getting more sophisticated, not because it is in my nature to enjoy these things, but because I feel less confident.
It is possible, of course, to grow old gracefully. I see women doing it every single bloody day as I prepare to do same. I come to realise that the cliché that older women become invisible is real - as real as the invisible threshold that we step behind. Behind this door, which is as mysterious as anything Miyazaki has dreamt, I see older women doing remarkable things. I see them rocking undyed, and beautifully dyed, hair. I see them crushing their fitness goals. I hear them speaking their minds. I read them sharing wisdom learnt through let down and loss and living life. I only wish that this reality was the common perception, and not something we have to remind ourselves of daily, as we speak our little mantras into the mirror.