Fighting aging with friendship, fancy footwork
Women’s groups aim to balance support, fun
BEAUFORT, N.C. — Martha Barnes’s home was buzzing. It was a Saturday in little Beaufort, N.C., time to get ready for the town’s Mardi Gras parade, and women were zigzagging around the house, applying makeup, laughing, and calling out repeatedly for the Fireball Cinnamon Whisky sitting on the kitchen counter.
“If you want to say something,” a woman hollered above the din, “you better scream it!”
Barnes’s home is not a sorority house — she is 86 years old. But, for the day, it was something of the sort: the meeting spot for the Bodacious Belles — the town’s locally famous group of rambunctious retirees — eager to win best in show for the parade, again.
“We’re not very contained,” said Barnes, who is the Queen Mother of the group.
The Belles are a chapter of The Sweet Potato Queens — an international network of more than 6,500 women’s groups that aim for a similar balance of amusement and mutual support.
Throughout the year, the Belles perform in Beaufort’s holiday parades and organize activities among themselves, such as going to the movies, playing dominoes, and singing karaoke. But they have known one another for years, forming more than meaningful friendships.
Of course, for many older people, isolation, declining health, or a lack of financial resources makes getting older a cascade of challenges without easy solutions.
But in an aging country, in which women outlive men by about six years, the Belles are the kind of potent social network that knits older women together, as well as a window into successful aging.
The number of people 65 years or older in the United States grew rapidly from 2010 to 2020, increasing by 15.5 million, according to the Census Bureau — the largest gain ever for the older population in a single decade.
The gap in longevity, common to most parts of the world, reflects differences in biology, behavior, and occupations, among other factors. For example, research indicates that estrogen in women plays an important role in combating conditions such as heart disease.
Women also are more often willing to seek preventive and health care than men. And studies have shown that participating in community activities and forming lasting ties in groups such as the Belles is beneficial for older adults’ mental health and general well-being.
Lifang Hou, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University, said the positive feelings that come with seeking community — even the simple act of going to the mall or taking a walk with a friend — produce positive effects on the body.
“What these good hormones do is slow down our molecular aging,” Hou said, because they help cells function better. “It’s like nutrition for us.”
Hou said that although it is important to not overgeneralize behaviors, men tend to “value their individualism,” which can deter them from joining groups.
Beaufort (it’s pronounced BOW-firt in North Carolina, unlike the different city pronounced BYOO-furd in South Carolina), one of the oldest towns in North Carolina, was founded in the early 1700s as a fishing village. Now, its main industry is tourism, but boats still line the town’s harbor and colonial-style homes dominate the architecture.
Beaufort reflects an aging America, with retirees heading civic groups and local businesses. The town has a population shy of 5,000, with a median age of 51. The median age of the United States reached a new high of 38.9 years in 2022.
“You start on your second half of life when you move to Beaufort,” Barnes said.
The Beaufort chapter first met in 2001 and currently has 31 members ages 57 to 92. As Queen Mother, Barnes organizes the group’s meetings. Other members share in the responsibilities for planning costumes, choreography, and floats for parades.
Barnes, who was born in Richmond, Va., and grew up in North Carolina, moved to Beaufort with her husband, Elmo, in 1979. The two had bounced around the country in California, Rhode Island, and Washington when Barnes was in the Navy. Barnes and her husband opened a bed-and-breakfast that had a spice shop in the back, and which is now an Airbnb. Barnes has three children, who, for the most part, still live in the area.
The queens’ husbands, known as “spud studs,” help drive the Belles’ decorated golf carts during parades, and some serve on their security team, which passes out water on hot days and is there in case anything goes awry.
In a Southern culture that may traditionally reward constraint, the Belles skew opposite. They like to curse and yell and stuff Nerf balls into their bras. They don’t talk like blushing flowers, either. As one Belle told another: “You’re bad to the bone, girlfriend.”
Only one Belle has been barred from an event (she tried to go behind the counter at a local bar and grab wine).
But the Belles also share tender moments of affection and support — including holding hands and telling one another how beautiful they look.
“We’re ladies, but we also know how to have fun,” Barnes said. “We can draw the line if we get too risque.”
The larger group, Sweet Potato Queens, was the creation of Jill Conner Browne in the 1980s. She is originally from Mississippi and discovered that she lived near what is billed as the Sweet Potato Capital of the World: Vardaman, Miss. She volunteered to be the queen at the annual farmers festival, and although that dream did not pan out, she entered herself and her friends in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Jackson, Miss., as queens.
She started writing books at age 30 about her experience, with some of her bestselling books ranging in topic from raising children to quips on financial planning, all rooted in Conner Browne’s perspective as a Southern woman.
Now 71, Conner Browne has seen her books spawn Sweet Potato Queen chapters in more than 30 countries and across the United States, not just the South. Members convene annually for a parade in Jackson. There is also a Sweet Potato Queens musical that premiered in Houston in 2016.
Conner Browne said the Jackson parade, held around St. Patrick’s Day, is a healing event for all of the women who come, with people crossing paths and forming intimate connections.
When a queen from Arizona died of cancer, her chapter sent some of her ashes to Conner Browne.
(The Belles ask that potential members read Conner Browne’s first book and pay $35 in annual dues.)
Generally, the Belles and other Sweet Potato Queen chapters have members older than 50.
“The experiences are universal,” she said. “Life is hard on a good day, I don’t care who you are.”