Your Future Self Will Be Too Short to Reach the Towels

This piece was written by one of our dear readers—a woman with something real to say. Each month, we handpick the best submissions for Dear Reader because we’re after that PROVOKED bite: truth, intelligence, and heart. These stories come from women our age—women who’ve lived enough to know better and still care enough to tell it anyway. Because being seen and heard matters. Because storytelling is how we stitch ourselves to one another. And because when one woman speaks her truth, another finally recognizes her own. — Susan Dabbar, Editor-in-Chief

A trip to Paris revealed how little the world is built for aging women.

The tub was 2.5 feet high. Clearly, nobody who designed that bathroom had pictured my mother. She was well below 5 feet tall. In a fully booked Paris hotel, this wasn’t an inconvenience—it was a locked door. She couldn’t get in without assistance; not because she was frail or confused, but because whoever designed that bathroom hadn’t designed it for her. Had not, it turns out, designed much of anything for her.

My mother was 88. She’d waited years for this trip—first through the long years of caring for my father and then through the pandemic that delayed the trip further. She wanted to return to the city she loved while she could. Neither her old left shoulder injury nor the right finger she fractured on the way to the airport would stand in her way. I handled the logistics and travel plans, all fully refundable and designed for easy travel. I thought I was giving my mother a gift by taking her to Paris. Instead, she gave me a wake-up call—the physical world, it turned out, had not been built for her.

And maybe not for the future me.

The Body Changes. The World Doesn’t.

She once claimed 5-foot-2 on a good day, but by the time we reached Paris, she was closer to 4-foot-10—roughly the height of an 11-year-old—and a physical reminder of the years gone by. This isn’t unusual. Women lose height faster than men as they age: Declining estrogen in menopause accelerates bone density loss; spinal compression and gravity do the rest. In other words, the female body keeps shrinking. But the problem isn’t that women lose height. It’s that the world declines to come down with them.

It stays exactly where it is—unchanged.

We left the tub room for one with a walk-in shower, but the elevated handles on the heavy door meant she couldn’t go in or out alone. Because the light switch was higher than she could comfortably maneuver, the room would be dark without help. The towel rack and mirror were out of her reach, the closet clothing rod rose above her grasp, and the espresso machine perched on a shelf was set above her height. The main element of the room—the bed—sat so high she couldn’t get into it without assistance.

Maybe a woman her age is expected to share a room.

Or she wasn’t expected to be there at all.

A City Out of Reach

The fifth-floor room provided a view, but she couldn’t put the room key in the elevator card reader. Or reach the button. Lacking handrails, she felt unsteady going up and down. To the front desk and bellman, she was barely a tuft of gray hair as she waited for assistance and stretched to peer over the counter.

The tour bus to Giverny, Monet’s home, featured a staircase with foot-high risers. She needed a boost, and the driver and guide impatiently smoked a cigarette. We skipped the trip to the scenic upper deck, and when we reached the gardens, she was scolded for moving too slowly.

She was welcome to visit. Just not at her own pace.

The Paris Metro? Forget it. Too many old stations with uneven, sometimes slippery, steps and no elevator option. Even as Paris works to meet standards of accessibility for the disabled, many stations remain inaccessible for wheelchairs and other mobility devices. When Paris hosted the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics, only 25% of rail stations accommodated wheelchairs.

They do get the attention though. A wheelchair-bound father and his adult daughter at our hotel, relegated to the handicap accessible rooms on the ground floor, were catered to by staff, perhaps with greased wheels. My walking mother was invisible. Ambulatory and short, she fell between the standard world and the accessible one.

To get around, we walked. Miles, in fact. And Uber-ed. Together. The pace of the city with its charming, narrow, cobblestone streets can challenge a slow wobbly walker. Crowds parted for no one, least of all a small slow woman making her way through them.

Public restrooms offered no relief. Heavy doors, stiff latches, high hooks, elevated mirrors—all barriers to entry. And privacy. She had no ability to put on lipstick or fix her hair, as though it no longer mattered, even though it did. For the most personal moments, Paris expected my mother to never be alone.

The Architecture of Exclusion

Paris didn’t just happen to be hard for my mother. The problems she faced stem from decades, if not centuries, of design and accessibility decisions. It isn’t malice so much as indifference. Being vertically challenged isn’t a disability; designing for taller, younger people is a choice. Unless wheelchair bound, our hotel didn’t envision my mother at all, just as it couldn’t see her over the counter. The in-room fixtures fostered dependence, reducing a capable woman to a child—by design.

In 15 years, she’d gone from a welcomed, autonomous tourist—part of a couple boosting the French economy—to invisible, even to herself. The world had quietly revised its assumptions about her: She was no longer expected to travel, to desire beauty, to occupy luxury, to need dignity in public and private spaces. She’d stopped caring about how she appeared in a mirror she could no longer reach. She no longer required privacy, autonomy, or the simple pleasure of an espresso she made herself.

But Paris didn’t fail my mother. It revealed itself. Its rooms, sidewalks, and counters made visible what the rest of the world hides more politely: that design decides who gets to move freely, who gets to see themselves reflected, who gets to belong.

The farewell kiss came at Orly Airport. Mom’s reconstructed shoulder set off alarms. The lump on her shoulder triggered another alert. Security officers murmured in agitated French among themselves, barely glancing at the small woman before them, and tried to insist she remove the compression socks ordered by her physician.

She didn’t.