It happens to me more and more frequently.

In shops it’s very noticeable. People standing behind me get served before I do.

There seems to be some sort of radiation over store entrances and shop counters that renders me totally invisible to the staff.

Someone should tell the Department of Defense about it.

Although it’s superbly liberating to be free from the Male Gaze, I do object to being ignored by spotty-faced boys when they are paid to attend to me.

Ah well, I am only a customer after all.

When I was young and one of the beautiful people, similar large-larynxed boys would jostle each other, in shoves sometimes bordering on savagery, to be the one to serve me at the counter.

These days I am tempted to jostle back, shove queue jumpers out of the way and to tell the nasty little adolescents on the staff just what I think of them. I would dearly enjoy to unleash my anger and scorn.

It’s lucky for them I don’t carry a pocket Taser.

But I wasn’t brought up that way. I was raised to be polite, ladylike, and respectful toward others. Damn. Damn. Damn!

Keren Smedley, in Who’s That Woman in the Mirror? says

“Society can only make us invisible as we age if we allow it. If we all walked around with confidence, it wouldn’t happen. When we get dressed up and go out, it’s what we are thinking and feeling inside that matters - and its that which actually comes across.”

I have taken of late to wearing brighter colours in my scarves and berets for grocery shopping expeditions and strutting around telling myself that I am full of confidence and assurance. All I have managed so far is to attract attention by the snap and creak of my bones.

There must be a middle road somewhere I can take. I can’t be the only woman who is fading, daily, into total invisibility.

Tags: invisible