Don't let anyone kid you; being a 50-year-old woman may look glamorous in the movies, but in real life it's not all that and a bag of fiber wafers. You're too old to pull off belly shirts, but too young yet to qualify for senior discounts. Shopping for bathing suits becomes an even fresher hell than usual.

Worse -- too often, you're invisible to the rest of society. People brush you aside, or simply walk through you like you're Patrick Swayze in "Ghost." Young men look right past you, even while you're carrying on a conversation with them, 'cause they just ain't gots the time to waste actually paying attention to you. I had to grow my shocking silver hair (not a badge of age, incidentally; I found the first glint of gray in my brown hair at 14 and was half-n-half by 25, at which point I was pleasantly surprised to learn that a lot of people actually liked it) down to my butt, Emmylou Harris-style, just to minimize the chances of getting lost in the crowd. (And to give my blog a title.)

If they're not looking through you, they're overcompensating with condescension. Case in point: Yesterday, I brought my car in to the nearest chain lube place for an oil change. As I headed outside to drive off after paying, the 12-year-old who had worked on it brought me up short by cheerily wishing me, "Have a nice day, miss."

"Miss." This was not the first time. It's still only anecdotal, but my trendspotting antennae have detected an unmistakable acceleration in the incidence of this salutation, chiefly within the service industry, in direct proportion to my advancing age. I remember (sort of) back in my -- what, 20s? 30s? -- the opposite rite of passage: the first time a store clerk called me "ma'am." A little part of me died that day as I realized I'd probably never again get carded trying to buy beer or get into a dance club. Has even "ma'am" now passed along with my waning fertility?

This latest indignity, though, makes me think wistfully upon the "ma'am" days. "Miss"? Really? The first time it happened was jarring, perhaps because even when "miss" was more age-appropriate to me, I never used it. Instead, I adopted what I considered the more progressive-sounding "ms." as my courtesy title of choice, happily checking off the option on magazine subscriptions, health forms, employment applications, announcing to the world that I was a Modern Woman. "Miss" just never sounded much like me to begin with, at least not since I was around 13 and latched onto a feminist movement I didn't yet even understand. But what's going through the heads of these people? Do they think I don't know how old I am? Sure, I don't wear a ring, sure, I'm not married, so technically, in Emily Post-world, I AM still a "miss," I guess. But I can't even delude myself -- however youthful I feel inside or however childish I behave outwardly, however many times a week I wear tie-dyed t-shirts, all it takes is a look in the mirror or an all-too-frequent bad knee day to snap me back to reality. If I can't fool myself, surely I can't deceive you, whippersnapper. Now get off my lawn.

I suppose, though, there'll come a day when I look back even on this stage fondly. That day -- the day I give myself the full Kevorkian -- will be when someone, somewhere, describes me as "__ years young."