The writer Anna Freixas, last Monday at her home in Córdoba.PACO PUENTES / EL PAÍS
Neither grandmother, nor old woman, nor mature adult, nor any of those silly appellations with which we usually call and equate old women.
Much less
old man
or
young man
newly minted terms that Anna Freixas considers “bullshit”.
The psychologist and feminist has dared to demolish the myths fed by an alleged nullifying love on the part of children and professionals to defend old age, thus, with all the letters, with an impeccable argument: “I am lucky to be old because I am not old. I have clapped.
We are old, old, pioneers, veterans, why look for other names and why pretend otherwise?
"The same ones who fight and get divorce, abortion, homosexual marriage, the law of gender violence and so many advances today we have to achieve another: and it is our right to dignity."
It is the great thesis of his essay
Yo vieja
(Captain Swing), which appeals to a new look at that stage of life that is usually overshadowed.
An interesting and illuminating provocation.
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Freixas (Barcelona, 75 years old) destroys the common places of old age and sets out to break the clichés that stigmatize, make invisible and annul the life and the particular will of each elderly person.
“In a residence or hospital your life disappears, your past, you are no longer an interesting journalist, a wonderful comedian or a wonderful seamstress.
We are people who have contributed to society and suddenly we find ourselves with the erasure of our past ”.
His book could be valid for older men, he insists over and over again, but the truth is that he talks mostly about women.
Old women.
Women fed up with the darkness that hangs over them after crossing the threshold of sexual attraction, contribution to work and commercial stereotypes that exalt youth.
"Why that title:
Old me?"
“I thought about it to provoke, to stop apologizing for making us old.
I want to show that we can be proudly old and vindicate the term that scares so much.
The nickname of "grandmother" by strangers seems to him a "mortal sin".
"We are old, we were young and we have been lucky to become old."
Old women, she says, tend to go through life with complexes - "I already ...", "I, as I am old ..." -.
“Well yes, I am, let me be old, proudly old, I can't be young and old at the same time.
My book is a vindication, a normalization of the term to give light to this period of life that has been obscured and that gives panic ”.
If you decide to be an old woman with a beard and mustache, try to make it sound like freedom, not laziness
Faced with the rebellion against old age that imposes constant pressure to look young, to dye, to lose weight, to dress like “a
pathetic
barbie
”, Freixas defends gray hair, choosing a size larger and assuming a new, free, serene physical reality, calm, although without ever falling into laziness. "If you decide to be an old woman with a beard and mustache, try to make it sound like freedom, not laziness," she says in her book. “Certain aspects of neglect contribute to the exclusion of old women. If you are young and you leave your hair in your armpit, it is freedom. If you are older it can sound lazy and increase rejection towards old age ”, he explains.
And is this not contradictory? How many of the impositions of beauty can be rejected and how many comply to avoid falling into that stereotype of neglect. For her, the answer is clear: those aspects that contribute to exclusion such as the care of hair, teeth, nails or hygiene must be kept at bay. "I usually tell my people that if one day I lose my mind, please pay someone to wipe the slime off me." At the other extreme, he criticizes those who dress so extravagant and stupendous that they deny their reality and exclude others. "I want to be an old woman that anyone can recognize."
The author, like her book, exudes a spirit of resistance that evokes the same fighting spirit that has guided the footsteps of that generation since they first kicked. Seventies, eighties. They illuminated the great social conquests and today they must lead - Freixas maintains - the fight for rights that were not contemplated: freedom, dignity, justice and, in short, "the control of our life until the last day." “We old women have been pioneers in everything and our mission now is to be pioneers in being old. We have had to invent everything: divorce, abortion, homosexual marriage, the law of violence. We have had to name so many things that had no name, and now is the time to name a comfortable and affirmative old age ”.
Freedom today, for example, means choosing to be at home, with your memories, your neighbors, your frame of reference, without being moved to a residence against your will - except in physical states that require it, he grants - and with a social sensitivity that facilitates the necessary accompaniments to be able to go out, to have affection, a cultural and sexual life, to have the right to touch and "attend not only to what is essential, but to what allows you to live with dignity". “In the residences there is a persecution of the affective life in collusion between the management and the children. You have to respect that affective or physical development. Another thing is that it is a disturbed one that is reaching out, but if at 80 years old I have a relationship with the right to brush with a man or woman, why am I not going to be able to, where is it written that I cannot.We are talking about censorship of affectivity ”.
"Under the desire for the well-being and care of the elderly sometimes hides the desire that this old woman does not complicate your life with her freedom"
Or freedom not to be a victim of the children who take them in turns against their will.
"Taking parents home and forcing them to leave theirs every fortnight should be prohibited as long as they have a minimum of self-awareness."
But there is an enemy against that freedom and it is close: merengue love.
“It is practiced by everyone, including sons and daughters: under the desire for the well-being and care of the eldest, there is sometimes the desire that this old woman does not complicate your life with her freedom.
That "mom, I don't want you to break ...".
Let me break whatever
I want to manage my money and do what I want.
In the name of love they take away your freedom and I don't want that for old women.
I want to love whoever I want.
We have contributed a lot to life and it is time to do justice ”.
"Do we live too many years?"
-I think so.
Sometimes life is too long for people who have a difficult life.
Freixas does not have a great desire to live many years.
He has accompanied his partner in the last time of his life, he says, and he still has that in his skin and, above all, defends the need to respect the will of the loved one even if you think that what he chooses does not suit him.
But that subject, death, is another matter.
As long as we are alive, he goes on to say, respect our rights.
That is what it is all about.