The aging woman disrupts the Wife and Mother roles society assigns her.

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

And so the cult of “heroic mothers” is systematically encouraged: if society persuades mothers to surrender their sons to death, then it thinks it can claim the right to assassinate them. Because of the mother’s hold on her sons, it is useful for society to make her part of it: this is why the mother is showered with signs of respect, why she is endowed with all virtues, why a religion is created around her from which it is forbidden to stray under severe risk of sacrilege and blasphemy; she is made the guardian of morality; servant of man, servant of the powers that be, she fondly guides her children along fixed paths. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 369 (#complicates, via linked claim)

But what singularly defines the situation of woman is that being, like all humans, an autonomous freedom, she discovers and chooses herself in a world where men force her to assume herself as Other: an attempt is made to freeze her as an object and doom her to immanence, since her transcendence will be forever transcended by another essential and sovereign consciousness. Woman’s drama lies in this conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as essential, and the demands of a situation that constitutes her as inessential. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 64 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Aging women exaggerate femininity to disavow their intimidating autonomy — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710; Woman’s defining situation is being forced to assume herself as Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 64; Society coopts the mother’s influence by sanctifying her as guardian of morality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 369

Broader Connections

• Aging women exaggerate femininity to disavow their intimidating autonomy #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1710
• Society coopts the mother’s influence by sanctifying her as guardian of morality #complicates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 369
• Woman’s defining situation is being forced to assume herself as Other #complicates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 64