A lively, fascinating, eye-opening look at women and aging in America, by the beloved New York Times columnist. "You're not getting older, you're getting better," or so promised the famous 1970's ad—for women's hair dye. Americans have always had a complicated relationship with aging: embrace it, deny it, defer it—and women have been on the front lines of the battle, willingly or not. In her lively social history of American women and aging, acclaimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins illustrates the ways in which age is an arbitrary concept that has swung back and forth over the centuries. From Plymouth Rock (when a woman was considered marriageable if "civil and under fifty years of age"), to a few generations later, when they were quietly retired to elderdom once they had passed the optimum age for reproduction, to recent decades when freedom from striving in the workplace and caretaking at home is often celebrated, to the first female nominee for president, American attitudes towards age have been a moving target. Gail Collins gives women reason to expect the best of their golden years.
Author
Gail Collins was the Editorial Page Editor of The New York Times from 2001 to January 1, 2007. She was the first woman Editorial Page Editor at the Times. Born as Gail Gleason, Collins has a degree in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. in government from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Beyond her work as a journalist, Collins has published several books; Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics, America's Woman: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, and The Millennium Book which she co-authored with her husband Dan Collins. She was also a journalism instructor at Southern Connecticut State University. She is married to Dan Collins of CBS.
