Aging women exaggerate femininity to disavow their intimidating autonomy

Evidence

The aging woman well knows that if she has ceased being a sexual object, it is not only because her flesh no longer provides man with fresh treasures: it is also that her past and her experience make a person of her whether she likes it or not; she has fought, loved, wanted, suffered, and taken pleasure for herself: this autonomy is intimidating; she tries to disavow it; she exaggerates her femininity, she adorns herself, wears perfume, she becomes totally charming, gracious, pure immanence; she admires her male interlocutor with a naive eye and childish intonations; she ostentatiously brings up her memories of girlhood; instead of speaking, she chirps, claps her hands, bursts out laughing. She plays this game with a kind of sincerity. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox is dense: woman’s accumulated transcendence (a life actually lived) is what makes her unacceptable as a sexual object, so she performs regressive immanence to escape her gains. This is core Beauvoir, resisting one-sentence summary.
• XREF: Directly inverts the earlier claim that femininity is imposed from outside — here she takes it up voluntarily as a defense against her own achieved personhood. — connects to: The aging woman disrupts the Wife and Mother roles society assigns her.; Aging women deny finitude and feel duped by a passively endured destiny — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710; Exploiting femininity to the extreme can paradoxically grant women near-masculine independence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Exploiting femininity to the extreme can paradoxically grant women near-masculine independence #corroborates (0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1684
• Women who depend solely on erotic charm resist growing old ferociously #qualifies (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1719