But I’m bound to get lucky… there’s twenty of them!
OK, that one doesn’t work as well in print…
Maybe there’s something about your body language that said, "Don’t pay any attention to me, I’m just here waiting for a friend to join me. As soon as he does, I’ll take another step closer to you, make eye contact, and start to say “table for two, please”–but before I get the words out of my mouth, you’ll be asking me: “Two?”.
I comment all the time to my wife about being invisible. Most days I am completely visible but some days nobody can see me all day long. It gets annoying. Standing in line to buy something or looking for help at in a store, the gaze of the employee will slide right past me to the next person. My lips move and I think sound is coming out but nobody responds. It must have something to do with dress because it comes and goes.
Bars are the worst. No bartender can see me except for dark, seedy places. Second worse is department stores. I don’t even bother going in highend department stores because the sales people can almost walk right through me without noticing.
I first noticed my invisibility when I was walking through an airport a few years ago. In one city, every attractive woman I passed under the age of forty (I was fifty or so) failed to catch my eye as we walked past each other. “That’s funny,” I thought. “Gosh, the women in this town are awfully stuck-up.” It wasn’t even a direct greeting I was expecting, a “Hi,” or “How you doing?”, or “Good morning,” it was just the normal eye-contact I’d gotten since my late teens, early twenties. But in my destination city, it was the same. “Jeepers, the women in THIS town are even worse than that last lot! It’s like I’m–invisible!!”
Then I checked my driver’s license and sure enough–my “expiration” date had passed. I was no longer dateable, no longer flirtable, no longer greetable. I was officially old. It was a very sad day.
I basically agree with the OP, but as a counter, think of how many places and situations you’ll be “that creepy guy” just by virtue of your age and gender.
Feel better now?
I just thought service was getting bad in general, but maybe it is me. I’m 5’6" and 51. I spend a lot more time at the “please wait to be seated” sign than I used to.
As a middle-aged woman (60’s) I can relate completely with the OP. The most egregious was recently when a clerk reached over my shoulder to take money from someone standing behind me in line. Yes! Invisible me!
My favorite example was in an episode of Six Feet Under when Ruth was shopping in a department store with her friend, played by Kathy Bates. They’re chatting away and the friend casually opens her purse and starts chucking jewelry into it. Ruth is aghast! “What are you doing”? The Kathy Bates character says something to the effect of “Stop worrying. We’re at that age now where we’re invisible. I never get caught.”
A 50th birthday is like a Liberal Arts degree: it bars you from much of the world while granting you license to laugh at those admitted.
I am… distinctive looking, but much the same has happened to me the last few years. I chalk it up to service getting bad in general. I know that being invisible can’t have much to do with really inept waitronning.
Its true-you are no longer a market for designer clothes, movies, video games, etc. You are only valued for the taxes you can pay.
But be consoled-in 20 years or so, today’s twenty somethings will be in even WORSE shape.
The 36-50 demographic makes its living from the 18-35 demo.
On a more serious note, there may be more to it than people simply ignoring you. Some of the examples seem to be cases when the oblivious individual truly did not see a person standing in plain sight. It’s a phenomenon I’m familiar with; I have been overlooked more than once by friends who were actively looking for me, despite the fact that I was standing in plain sight and close at hand. (This sort of thing has happened to me fairly often for most of my life, so it’s not just encroaching middle age ninjosity. :p)
There has to be some factor that makes certain people unobtrusive. I’m reminded of a point in one of Larry Niven’s short stories: the protagonist could identify people who were very old, but retained a youthful appearance due to a life-extending drug, by the way they moved. Their movements tended to be smooth and purposeful. Economical. They knew where they were going and what they were going to do before they started, so there was no hesitation or wasted motion.
Perhaps some people hold themselves more still as they age. They fidget and shift around less. Motion catches the eye, so if you don’t move much, you may get overlooked in favor of people or things that are moving.
The only time I felt like this was in a local furniture store that prides itself on customer service–to the point of being pushy more often than not. I walked that store for twenty minutes one night looking for someone to help me. I swear I was repelling salespeople like a like-charged particle. (For what it’s worth, I was a white male, about 40, in business casual clothing.) I finally went to the customer service counter and asked for a salesperson. They were as surprised as I was that no one had approached me.
My hypothesis is that I was a single guy, and that single guys in that situation are notorious for not making final purchases. I once went to that same furniture store with a friend; the veteran salesman who helped him WOULD NOT finalize the sale without talking to the guy’s wife; he’d been burned too many times by wives returning furniture. That might be at the root of what the OP was talking about, actually: when service folks see a single guy, they think he’s just waiting for his wife and won’t make a move until she gets there. Maybe it works conversely, too.
At 50, I’ve been the invisible woman for about 5 years now - average height, white, generic-looking woman with some extra pounds. The only time anyone sees me is when I’m with my husband, who has gone the silenus route (loud, distinctive clothing, hats, walking stick, beard.), Everyone sees him, except at the furniture store, where he is only visible if I am with him. He only grumbles that while he is not invisible to hot 20-something women, they see him as safe and avuncular. He wants to be seen to be an intriguing scoundrel as he was in his youth, but instead he is on his way to Santa Claus-dom.
That happens to me too, I think it has to do with “blank” body language people don’t seem to classify you as a person and you therefore become an object or something.
My ex was quiet, reserved, and kept his eyes mostly on the ground. Didn’t want to be bothered except when he did want to be bothered. It was cool because salespeople didn’t bug him when he was just browsing, but when he wanted to spend money and ask a question, no one engaged him because he had the same reserved, unassuming posture and lack of eye contact. Maybe some of the people complaining here aren’t smiling, greeting others, or otherwise attempting to engage others?
Read it again: it describes the Ruby Tuesday episode as:
I’ve had plenty of similar experiences. I’m not extrapolating, I’m recounting.
The fact that others - including some famous cartoonists - seem to have occasionally experienced this phenomenon calls into question your suggestion that we’re all just projecting our insecurities on the world.
This Onion story seems to be getting at something similar.
The Hawaiian shirt idea is intriguing.
I was just thinking, maybe it has to do with smell.
As a man gets older, and his old man smell hasn’t kicked in yet, his decreasing testosterone levels means he produces less pheromones.
Or perhaps you’ve been covered in salad dressing and the odor of pungent vinegar and tangy Roquefort blocked their smell receptors, preventing them from distinguishing you from leafy greenery.
:dubious: Cite?
Exactly. Whether you realize it or not, wearing “age appropriate” clothing is the same as putting on a uniform - you may as well be wearing a ghillie suit.
However you don’t have to go to the opposite extreme and look ridiculous (not that Hawaiian shirts are ridiculous - trying to keep an open mind here). You just have to bust out of the stereotype of what a middle-aged suburban man looks and dresses like.
Personally I like to go with the degenerate hippie professor look which consists of just a few really simple props - long hair, usually tied back, rimless progressive focus glasses, silver moonstone ring, cargo pants, sneakers and t-shirt. I don’t dress that way to stand out, it’s just what I like, but it’s more than enough to “be different.”
It also happens to conveniently conjure another stereotype that is just uncommon and non-threatening enough that it’s sometimes actually useful to look like that.