TRACEY INTERVIEWED BY WOWOWOW
The wOw Interview: Author Tracey Jackson
by wowowow on February 15, 2011
Is 50 really the new 30? wOw talks to author and screenwriter Tracey Jackson, whose new memoir, Between a Rock and A Hot Place, takes on what it really means to be a 50 year old woman today.
wOw: What made you take this on the topic of aging in the first place?
Tracey Jackson: As I hit the fifty mark, I kept hearing this chorus of baby boomers chanting, “We are thirty.” While I wanted to believe it, everything I was experiencing was telling me it was so not true. On one hand I loved the concept, but on the other I am very aware of boomer delusion. So I decided if I was feeling all these things that were anything but thirty, then my comrades in boomerdom must be as well. We are the generation that feels we have to control everything, so I found the notion that we could turn back the clock willy-nilly both hysterical and harmful. I am presently waiting for the release of the iAm30 App.
wOw: How has the reaction been so far to your assertion that, contrary to popular belief, fifty is not the new thirty?
TJ: It’s interesting because when I ask people, they inevitably say three things, some of which contradict each other. Everyone says that inside, they feel no different than they did at, say, 22 or 26 — sometimes as young as 17. And I think we all do feel that way — there is that person inside who is not very different than who we were thirty years ago. But that person is now in the youth of old age, and it’s very hard to connect those dots. Most shave ten years off how old they feel in daily life. And then the really honest ones roll their eyes and own that not only do they not feel thirty, but they’re relieved that they don’t have to put up this front. They like the fact someone is saying “Hey, I don’t feel thirty do you?” It’s very hard to constantly pretend like you are something you are not. And by attaching this phony age on us, it really sets us up for all sorts of expectations that can’t, nor should they be, met. So mostly I get, thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking.
wOw: There are quite a few intimate revelations in this book: fantasies about Jon Stewart, the reality of middle-aged sex, etc. Do you think people will look at you differently now?
TJ: I don’t know how they looked at me before. I think they may look at themselves differently, or perhaps not feel alone. This whole notion that we are in our sexual peak at 50 — please, it’s absurd. In terms of our place in the animal kingdom, we are not even supposed to be alive. The original plan for women was barefoot, pregnant and dead. It’s only thanks to modern science and medicine that we are still here. So the idea that we are as easily aroused, and constantly ready to hop into bed and frisky like a 20 or 30 year old is lunacy. There are instances when it can come back, but those often require straying and doing all sorts of things we aren’t supposed to. Hot sex as a quotidian part of the daily to and fro of life with kids and long marriages and responsibilities coupled with the fact your estrogen, (nature’s aphrodisiac) has left the building?? None of this leads you to rolling around the kitchen floor like you did in years gone by.
And if we were, both men and women, in our sexual peaks at this age, explain Viagra to me.
wOw: What’s your favorite part about growing older?
TJ: My favorite thing about growing older is that I am actually in the place I want to be at this stage. I have the family I want to have, I found true love after a bad first marriage — so truth be told, even without the estrogen my sex life is better than it was in my 30s. I am stronger physically than I have ever been, so I’m able to do anything I want. I look back from this vantage point with no regrets, and I think that is huge.
I have also been able to recreate myself at this stage, and I actually enjoy what I’m doing now more than what I did in my thirties and early forties. Or, I should say, it’s what I should be doing now, so it feels right. In many ways, it’s not so much about growing older, but where my life is at this older juncture. But that only happens if you accept where you really are. Which is what I try and show in the book: our life is what we make it, especially now. Things are going to change, big things. But it’s the forward march that counts. Just keep moving and doing and don’t let them get you down.
wOw: Your least favorite?
TJ: My least favorite part about growing older is the loss, the deaths — the deaths of those older we have been close to, the death of friends, deaths that come from disease that is very different than the random deaths we experienced in our youth. The thought we could be next.
wOw: How did your family feel about your publishing this book, with its revelations about HRT, Botox habits, etc? Did you allow them to read it before submitting to your publisher?
TJ: My family is so used to me parading us around and using us all as topics that this book was a non-issue. I spent two years making a documentary, “Lucky Ducks,” about us, so this was nothing. If I want to write about Botox or HRT, or even sex, they could care less. They think it’s funny. In fact the sex chapter has been passed around my older daughter’s dorm floor. My younger one has not read it. My husband reads everything I write, but that is more for editorial purposes than content. I did ask him after I wrote the sex chapter, if he minded, and he was fine with it. But that is the way he is; it’s why we are happily married. Many husbands would have had a fit and not allowed it. He would have let me put in pictures!
wOw: What are your thoughts about being 50+ in the workplace? Your view of the workplace once 60?
TJ: Well, that’s a real problem. In a word, it sucks. We are not a society that embraces the older person, and oddly, while the older person today looks and acts younger than the older person of yesteryear, the real powers in many parts of the workforce have never been younger. So there are many sectors where you can’t be hired old, much less get old and hang around. Media is very tough, unless you are a superstar by 40, and in tech, old is 27. With the economy, it has gotten harder and harder for people fifty and over to get new jobs if they have been let go, and too often, to hold onto their jobs despite the fact they are better and more experienced than their younger counterparts. One of the biggest complaints I hear from women is, “I can’t get a job at this age, and I can’t find a man.” Now according to Freud, those are the two things that make up the quality of your life: doing work you like and being productive and being connected to another. So it puts women in a terribly vulnerable position.
I advocate a Plan B that one should start putting into effect in ones’ early forties, because chances are unless you are a Supreme Court justice, a tenured professor or own your own business, you will need it.
wOw: What’s next for you? Do you plan to write more books? Do you think this book will be made into a movie?
TJ: I hope to write more books. I suppose realistically we have to see how this one performs. I would love to make another documentary. I will continue blogging, as I love that, and there are whispers about this book’s future on the big or little screen.
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