Real Mature Granny

Real Mature Granny
'Change the message': the exhibition celebrating mature women's bodies
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Jacqueline Maley is a columnist. Connect via Twitter , Facebook or email .
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Women over 50 appear in nude portraits challenging society's - and often, their own - perceptions.
“At this age I am in my glory. I hold a lit chandelier because they throw glory. The fan is for hot flushes, the tattoo reflects making my mark and the flowers for a head and heart full of bloomings.” Credit: Ponch Hawkes
When photographer Ponch Hawkes went looking for images of naked older women on the internet, she found acres of blank space, then a rich vein of what’s termed “granny porn”.
“The whole panorama, from the 50s onwards – there wasn’t anything,” she says. “The odd life model. You are more likely to find a drawing. Then you look more, and you find 500,000 images of ‘Young man f…ing old woman’.”
“I grew up with a sense of shame about my physical appearance. Now I am honouring it, appreciating it, taking care of it. Immersion in a dance and movement practice has finally enabled me to land in my skin.” Credit: Ponch Hawkes
Hawkes hit on this surprising corner of the internet when she was commissioned to take 500 portraits of women over the age of 50 – an act she didn’t recognise as radical until she realised how few such images existed. For a society preoccupied with the female body, interest drops off precipitously after 50. “For every woman, it’s on your mind, the question of body image and body hatred, and there isn’t any material about that for older women.”
The project began as a health initiative, the brainchild of Martha Hickey, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Melbourne and Royal Women’s Hospital. Hickey’s clinical area is menopause, and many of her patients are women facing early menopause.
"I’d recently left a 36-year relationship that involved domestic abuse. I was ready to shed my skin, find myself. I jumped into the Flesh After Fifty project with this force. I removed ‘victim’ and replaced it with a strong woman who loves her body and self. I got my identity back.” Credit: Ponch Hawkes
“I have been struck over the years by how much their fear of becoming an ‘old woman’ added to the distress of the experience,” Hickey says. “Those two words in combination; there is nothing good about them. We really needed to change the message for younger women about what it is to become an older woman.”
Hickey noted that older women “play a hugely important role in society but are largely invisible in art”. So she came up with the idea of Flesh After Fifty , a program of exhibitions, talks, workshops, dinners and films to run over five weeks in Melbourne and, hopefully, later tour regionally and nationally.
“I dance tango, so I know that grace and form are important. Young women’s bodies are all beautiful in the same way, but older women’s bodies are each beautiful in their own individual ways. My public exposure was to lessen the cringe I’d felt about myself: ‘old’ and, ipso facto, uninteresting.” Credit: Ponch Hawkes
The program was so named after a quote from the famous Magnum agency photographer Eve Arnold, who wrote about photographing actress Joan Crawford in New York in the 1950s: “There she was nude – but sadly, something happens to flesh after 50.”
Set in the broader Flesh After Fifty program, the idea for Hawkes’ exhibition, 500 Strong , was to take nude portraits of 500 women. The final count ended up at about 420 after the project took longer than expected and the budget ran out.
“This is the only time I have been photographed naked. So why did I opt to do this? Maybe because no one had ever asked before. Maybe to look at what six decades of use and abuse looks like in my case. Definitely to join in on this great, joyous fleshy statement about being alive.” Credit: Ponch Hawkes
The models were volunteers who came forward after a media call-out; the Country Women’s Association enthusiastically embraced the idea, and Hawkes and her team travelled to Shepparton and Bendigo to photograph residents there.
Women were invited to bring a prop to pose with, and each was given the option of having her face obscured.
“The women who seemed very relaxed talked about how nudity was not an issue in their house when growing up,” Hawkes observes. “Some other women said they hadn’t taken their clothes off in front of anyone for a long time.”
“As I was taking off my clothes in the studio I felt uncomfortable, but I wanted to stand strong and proud with the other women. With the launch of the exhibition, we will explore our diversity, share ideas about identity and sense of ageing self, and how and why we now value our bodies.” Credit: Ponch Hawkes
Says Hickey, who posed for Hawkes herself: “We are hoping an exhibition like this will further reassure and empower women to know there are all kinds of variations of normal.”
Flesh After Fifty runs from March 28 to May 3 at the Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne.
To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald , The Age and Brisbane Times .

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