Granny

Tats. I drew this for a column years ago, about the fashion for tats, and how I thought it was a bit silly (that led to a fun few weeks of nasty letters from tattooists).

A couple of days ago, I wrote this in substack notes (if you don’t use the substack app, notes is like sane (for now) twitter).

“As I get older and greyer and closer to being a grandmother, I get more and more irritated by posts on the internet saying along the lines of “look at this amazing granny doing something that isn’t sitting in a chair”

Fuck off.”

I wrote it after another day on the internet seeing all the crap, including a horrible little reel on facebook or insta or somewhere, one of those reaction videos (ugh). There was a gender reveal event (ugh) being reacted to, and standing in front of whatever was going to turn blue or pink were a young man and an old lady, white-grey curly hair, cardiganed, short.

“What’s that granny doing? She’s not having a baby, is she?? Eeeew!!” was the reaction guy’s official reaction.

I looked at the comments and they were exactly what you might expect. Disgust. Horror. Taking the piss. If you have the slightest iota of an imagination, you can imagine what the scenario actually was that led an old woman and a young man to be in front of a gender reveal, but no, the internet went straight to “ugh, that’s GROSS” and I threw my phone away. Again.

Often, in newspaper stories, the first thing you know about an older woman in a story, whether she’s the CEO of a corporation, has knitted a tree-cosy, or has been brutally murdered, is that she’s a grandmother. Why? Is it relevant? In other settings, where no journalist has been present to ask the important have-you-got-grandchildren question, any grey haired woman in a picture or a video can be captioned as a granny. Why?

“Look at this granny running a marathon!”, “look at this sweet old nonna cooking all the food!”, “See this glamorous granny, she’s almost sexy!”

Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.

Shorthand. It’s just a stupid shorthand to say jesus christ, this woman is old, we don’t want to fuck her, and we have no interest in what she actually thinks, but we do want her to cook, and failing that, be a role-model for other old women, so here’s a name for that thing!

No need to remember that we are fully rounded human beings, with pasts, with reasons, with ideas, and with a butt load more experience in most things than most of those calling us granny.

It’s a name to reduce us into one of two groups:

1. Granny - Avó - Abuela - Nonna: Sweet, caring old lady who bakes cakes, smothers the grandchildren with kindness and is a bit simple.

2. Non-typical Granny: This one goes hang-gliding and doesn’t give a damn about her grandchildren (hell, she may not even have any, but we don’t care, since she has grey hair, though styled beautifully!!). She might even be capable of using a computer.

Fuck off.

A lot of people, mostly women, liked my post and I realised after a few comments that different people had read what I meant in a different way.

Some thought it meant “I’m old, why the hell am I referred to as ‘granny’ instead of ‘woman’?? Fuck off!”

Some thought it meant “I’m old, and I don’t want to go hang-gliding, I like sitting in a chair! Fuck off!”

Some thought it meant “I’m old, and I want to go hang-gliding, I don’t do chairs!! Fuck off!”

Why did we all read it (or write it, in my case) from all these different angles? Because we are fully rounded human beings, with pasts, with reasons, with ideas, and with a butt load more experience in most things than most of those calling us granny.

Fuck off.