Patriarchy’s obsession with youth and beauty in woman is nothing new. In a culture that sexualizes young girls in order todominate and control them, it’s no wonder a woman’s value is determined by her age and appearance.
Older women in our society are constantly diminished and silenced, a trend particularly evident in pop culture and media. In a survey conducted by Polygraph that reviewed 2,000 films to determine how often women spoke, they found that actresses between age 42 to 65 made up only 20% of the dialogue, in comparison with women aged 22 to 31 who spoke 38%.
Men, however, between the ages of 42 and 65 had more dialogue, about 39%, than their younger counterparts. TIME analyzed the careers of 6,000 actors and actresses and discovered that women experience their professional peak at age 30 while men reach their pinnacle at 45.
While Hollywood is not the only institution in our society that marginalizes older women, it’s hypervisibility demonstrates the disparity between the value our culture places on older women in comparison to men, or even younger woman.
In our age-obsessed patriarchal culture, young women are blamed for sexual assault because they appeared “older” than they actually are. Yet older women are expected to try and look younger, pressured into using anti-aging beauty products in order to maintain their professional or personal status.
It’s a lose-lose situation, one where women of any age will be critiqued for simply existing.
While all women experience routine misogyny, the plight of the older woman is shaped by our culture’s perceptions of age as it relates to gender. In movies and media, older men are symbols of wisdom and divinity like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings or Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars whereas the wise woman character is nearly non-existent.
In my research, I struggled to even find examples of Crone-like characters in Hollywood and movie history that weren’t completely villainized, such as Ursula in The Little Mermaid or the Evil Queen in Snow White. Both of whose character motivations are to destroy the beauty and potential of younger women.
Screenshot from Snow White depicting the Witch trying to convince Snow White to eat a poisonous apple. The Witch/Evil Queen is the perfect representation of how Western patriarchy views the Crone.
From pop-culture to mythical folklore, the archetype of the Crone or Hag is routinely portrayed as a hellish older woman whose hideousness and evil intentions are worthy of scorn and degradation. In British and North American folktales, a ‘hag’ is another word for a spirit who causes nightmare. They appear in stories meant to frighten children so they go to bed when told to.
Yet in Irish and Scottish folklore, the Hag is represented as a divine deity of creation and weather. Her name is Cailleach, a direct translation of “old woman, hag” and is associated with various locations including the southernmost tip of the Cliffs of Moher.
Also known as Beira, she was the ruler of Winter, known for making mountains and valleys with a magic hammer. Flocks of animals would follow her as she wandered through her creations. She was particularly fond of deer, which she’d help escape from hunters.
The archetypes of the Crone and Hag are typically associated with death, water, night, and the occult. In Wiccan mythology, the Crone Goddess is the final part of the Triple Goddess and represents destruction and death. She is the natural ending to life, symbolized by winter.
The Crone Goddess is a midwife and healer, aiding the birth and creation of new lives with her extensive knowledge. She is a guide through difficult transitions and turmoil, an expert navigator of the passage between life and death.
This interpretation of the Crone/Hag is lesser known, but present cross-culturally and throughout time. She is embodied by the wisdom of the Spider Grandmother in Hopi mythology as well as the wild and mystic Baba Yaga in Russian folklore. Her name is Lilith, the rebellious woman who preferred banishment over subservience. Her name is Kali, Hindu goddess of death and destruction but also creativity and motherly love.
The Hag is the mother of the Underworld, guardian of the Dead. Her knowledge is beyond the comprehension of the living.
Ancient pagan societies understood the value of the Crone as a necessary phase in life, not just a woman’s life. Her close relationship with nature and the cycles of death and rebirth imbue her with magic sensibilities and capacities.
Why has our culture stripped all value from this archetype, and in turn, from older women in general?
During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church’s persecution and suspicion of the wise woman shaped modern Western culture’s perception of the ‘hag.’ Her knowledge and importance was ostracized by patriarchal institutions of power, squandering her reputation.
She was known as the Witch, an older woman who used devilish magic to bend the will of others. The old hag of European lore, the one associated with nightmares, assumed importance over the previous interpretations of her divinity.
Her talent and competency was questioned and ridiculed. To this day, society mocks the wisdom of the Crone. Making parody of her talents, jeering at the appearance of her body, making her doubt her foresight and intuition.
Since patriarchy defines a woman’s value as her sexual desirability to men, beauty is equated with youthfulness and ability to reproduce. Because the Crone is the stage after the Mother, the archetype of fertility, her value in a sex-driven society plummets.
This harmful attitude that older women are “useless” because of their inability to have children reinforces the sexist stereotype that women are only valuable because of their biology. Their dreams, knowledge, secrets, and magic capacities to bridge the world between life and death is perceived as a threat to their expected subservience to men.
Yet what of the beauty of a wrinkled brow? Of hands weathered by trial and error? Wisdom from age is unfitting on a woman, according to patriarchy. Wise women are dangerous.
And so the Crone lies low in the shadows, invisible yet desperate to remain relevant. She spends her money on products and services that promise access to the capitalist fountain of youth. Her physical markers of experience and knowledge are looked upon with disdain.
But her power is not incomplete, only limited. Her knowledge endures, spilling in spaces that allow it. For she exists within all of us, regardless of gender identity. The Crone is an archetype everyone is capable of embodying.
However, as long as we follow the path of a culture that scorns and diminishes older woman, that holds signs of death and decay with contempt, we continue to neglect the wisdom of the Crone Goddess.