When we see women over fifty disrupting the status quo, our girl-crush-o-meter surges as fast as Olympian Florence Griffith-Joyner (fastest woman in the 🌍) ran 100 meters. Witnessing fierce femmes living freely without the rusty myths of age anchoring them down is incredibly aspirational. So when we met Idelisse Malave and Joanne Sandler in a chance encounter at our NYC office, we boldly asked them to model for us (they bravely said yes 🙏), and subsequently became fast friends 👯. This week we fell out of our chairs with excitement as they launched their new podcast, Two Old Bitches. 

Idelisse Malave, 69, has been cultivating her inner bitch for about four decades now. As Vice President of the Ms. Foundation for Women and as President of the Tides Foundation, she led social, racial and economic justice organizations. Now, she's free from full-time leadership gigs but still does consulting to fund her love for shopping.

At 65, Joanne Sandler's still blazing the trails for womankind. After 30 years of advocating for women's rights and global feminism—and most recently working as Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, she's saying "hell no" to shutting up and sitting down. 

With their podcast (and let's be honest...their lives in general), Joanne and Idelisse are reclaiming the words "old" and "bitch" to fit their deserved superwoman status.

Being old actually means you're free and you can do almost anything you want to do. A 'bitch' is someone with a real spine who speaks truth to power and stands up for herself because she's liberated. Old doesn't mean you're just going to fade as you get older or that people ignore you or that you're not sexy or cool. When we say, I'm too old for this shit, we're flipping it. It's not, I'm too old and I'm frail or can't do this. But it's I'm too old and I don't put up with this shit.

Idelisse and Joanne are refusing to inherit any invisibility cloaks that some might want to figuratively (we see you Harry Potter fans 👀) dress them in. "There's this idea that as you age nobody sees or hears you. It's really not true but if enough people say it over time, you start to believe. We want to pushback on that invisibility mantra," Joanne explained without an iota of inhibition. 

Joanne describes getting older as "having limited time that makes you more conscious of living your life the way you want to live it. Your sense of wonder and delight is heightened and it's truly amazing when you realize that."

The dynamic duo are hitting the sound waves to celebrate women over 50 who are re-imagining their lives, bodies, relationships, and creativity as they evolve with age. Two Old Bitches amplifies the vibrant voices, like the 87-year old former dance teacher who was roomies with Andy Warhol in the 1960s and went on to be a masterful painter in her 80s, a 79-year old Australian activist, and 55-year old Indian American feminist who evolves from activist to using energy medicine for healing.

While the women featured in their podcast are all unique in their own right, the Two Old Bitches discovered a common thread weaving through their stories: the way they talked about love. Not just love in the romantic sense, but relationships and the deep connections they have with women they've known since they were 15 or 20. "When you know someone for decades, the love and respect is only going to get richer and better with time."

Another common theme that emerges across episodes is debunking the myth of planning. "It's not always true that you achieve something great in your life because you thought it through. None of these women did, they were just open to what happened and they listened to their intention and intuition and not a work plan." (phew!)

The thing that really stands out for us in these stories is the agelessness of womanhood. The guests are all women over 50, but their embodiment of the subversive female spirit will resonate whether you're 28, 49, or 92.

*~ Subscribe to Two Old Bitches wherever you stream your podcasts, and follow Joanne and Idelisse as they gather stories from women who reimagine, reinvent and rebel. ~*

Posted: July 31, 2019