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Why older women should be known as Queen-Agers

— by Alyson Walsh

Photo: InStyle

 

Bethann Hardison has made increasing racial diversity in the fashion industry the focus of her entire career. The multi-hyphenate New Yorker is a former model, talent manager, consultant for the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and a self-proclaimed revolutionary. In the 1980s, while running her own model agency, she started the Black Girls Coalition together with Iman, years later Hardison helped to create and edit Vogue Italia’s 2008 All Black Issue, launched the Diversity Coalition with Naomi Campbell in 2013 and received the CFDA Founder’s Award the following year. On Instagram this week, 77 year old  Hardison spoke of the difference between youth and maturity. Explaining that as a young woman she saw the good in everyone but experience and wisdom have taught her to steer clear of scoundrels, ‘ I want all who I love to be a certain way and those I don’t to be out of the way.’ One of the great things about getting older is that we appreciate our relationship with others and are more discerning about who we want around us. Older and wiser in many respects, but often people feel the same inside, as Hardison continues:

‘In maturity you can afford to make these decisions and accept the consequences of less being more. You have lived a life, who fits, stays. But somehow you are that same youth with the blessing of age, fortunate to have found your tribe. Queen you are, Teen you be.’

 

The image she used to accompany her post says it all:

 

 

We’re all Queen-Agers now

 

While writing my first book, I was searching for a celebratory term to describe the demographic of older women. Eventually, on the last draft my tired brain coined the phrase Fabsters and Generation FAB ( Fab standing for Fifty and Beyond  – or Fifty and Beyond Fabulous); I wasn’t entirely happy with it but there was a deadline looming and I needed to crack on. How I wish I’d come up with the term Queen-Ager. Now that is the joyful, age-defying title we deserve.

There’s an interview with Bethann Hardison over on InStyle HERE.

Queen-Agers rule. How do you feel about the new title?

 

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