Pooyay. (And what my Cajun grandmother taught me about refusing to disappear.)
$14.99 a month to watch someone else live! And the harder truth underneath my indignation.
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Pooya.
That’s what my little Cajun grandmother used to say when something happened that displeased her. She was a tiny woman with a big personality and absolutely no patience for nonsense, and “Pooyay” was her elegant way of saying: oh, hell no.
I’ve been saying it a lot lately.
Most recently because of a Facebook ad that landed in my feed last week, targeting me specifically — a woman of a certain age — with an offer to join a 55+ community for $14.99 a month. The centerpiece of this community, the thing they were most excited to tell me about, was virtual travel.
Not actual travel. Virtual travel. Someone else going somewhere wonderful while I watched on my computer from my chair.
Pooya.
And I sat there thinking: you people have absolutely no idea how many millions of women like me are still out here. Still thriving. Still grinding. Still dreaming. Still refusing to accept that the most exciting thing available to us at this age is a travelogue we didn’t take.
I’ve been ranting about a Facebook ad all week — the one promising women my age virtual travel as a substitute for actually living.
But the paid piece I wrote today isn’t really about the ad.
It’s about the art club. And what I was doing to myself inside it. And the quiet, daily, almost invisible ways women practice accepting less than the full life they actually want.
That one’s behind the paywall — because it’s the most honest thing I’ve written in a while and your paid sisters deserve it first.
If you’ve been thinking about joining us, today might be the day.