‘Grannycore’, the latest TikTok trend beloved of Gen Z, seems to be about a nostalgic aesthetic centred on the comforting style and hobbies of a ‘traditional’ grandmother. In real life, however, things could hardly be more different for us Boomer grannies.
Yes, we cook and possibly do needlework if we feel like it. We might even knit. But if you’re expecting a storybook grandmother – a stooped, doughy figure with a wispy white bun held in place by kirby grips, clad in a twinset and pearls and wearing sensible shoes – then you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree.
As a Boomer granny born in 1956, my early life was profoundly influenced by the 1960s – when sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll first appeared on the scene. Even in the backwater that was Kirkcudbright in south-west Scotland, local girls were wearing miniskirts in freezing temperatures, exhibiting their frighteningly mottled legs (a phenomenon we hardly see any more, except, perhaps, at Aintree on Grand National day). We were all – even if we didn’t realise it – in the process of being liberated by this ‘anything goes’ ethos.
This, after all, was the decade in which the idea of the ‘teenager’ was born, a concept utterly alien to anything that had come before. Many of the young men who died in the trenches were teenagers and our liberation came about partly as a result of their sacrifice. Such slaughter in that war and the next began to kill off the idea of deference and, as a result, the 1960s was one enormous adrenaline rush. Newfound prosperity, unrest on the left and the growth of peace movements all contributed to the heady feeling of an almost complete break with the past – and it swept us up, up and away into a new place.
Because of the era in which we grew up, us grannies have changed beyond all recognition from the staid figures of our youth. A lot of us still work, for instance, and think nothing of it. Afternoons round the bridge table, a staple of my mother’s life in her seventies, do not appeal to my generation. We might play bridge – it’s a great game – but it’s more likely to be after dinner. We might also wear a twinset, but it would probably be a cashmere sweater with a cardigan thrown nonchalantly over our shoulders. We certainly wear pearls, but mine are oversized ones from Arket, not Garrard. We continue to dye our hair, or at least a lot of us do. I have no intention of ever stopping.
Because of the era in which we grew up, us grannies have changed beyond all recognition from the staid figures of our youth
The idea that one can no longer wear certain items of clothing after passing 60 or even 70 now seems ludicrous. Witness Brigitte Macron’s legs on display at 72: OK, she’s French and probably wearing Chanel, but she looks great. This generation is trampling all over the concept of ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ – a particularly snarky idiom suggesting a woman who’s trying to appear younger ‘in an unconvincing or inappropriate way’,
Although so much has changed for the better, a new pressure has appeared that threatens to undo a lot of the progress. It almost feels as if no one is allowed to actually be old in an unfiltered way. Everywhere you look, there are pictures of women of a certain age who’ve clearly had ‘work’ done, often resulting in an appearance that is not so much youthful as just deeply strange. Kris Jenner is a case in point. She has recently turned 70 but now looks – in carefully lit photographs, anyway – roughly 17. One has to wonder why. Is it because she can? Or is it because she lives in Hollywood where almost everyone has gone under the knife – a new expectation for women that simply didn’t exist in the old days?
The best thing that has happened for us grannies, however, is the jettisoning of what I like to call the mouton mindset, an outlook that imposes limits on what can be done or achieved after a certain age. If we’re lucky enough to live past three score and ten in relatively good health, there is so much to discover; the horizon is limitless. It’s not just the outward and visible journey of our everyday lives that matters but the inner odyssey. Real youth isn’t actually about age at all: it’s about curiosity, about being open to new ideas and new people, new directions. Now the rulebook has been torn up, I reckon us former moutons are having the last laugh.
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