27/08/2026
It’s a giant lie and wishful thinking on their part! The older woman is always represented as problematic in popular culture, meanwhile many women are boldly going against what’s expected of us! Everywhere we look women in their 40’s onwards are starting business, travelling solo, learning new hobbies or pursuing dreams they’d long given up, or finding out who they are at this stage of their lives. It’s exciting and far from the narrative they are trying to sell us. We are not invisible unless we choose to be.
So why do women suddenly feel invisible at this age? It’s an internalised message, we have been nurtured to make ourselves perform for the male gaze and when we are no longer subjected to it, we feel that something is missing! It’s not that we don’t turn heads anymore, we turn fewer heads. They want that to feel like a loss. But the question is do we want it in the first place? Our worth is intrinsic, not external.
Yet the world has told us from the cradle that our value lies in how we look to others, especially men. At every turn we are told and sold solutions to our aging “problems” anti-aging creams, gadgets for looking younger, workouts to stop ageing, bio hacks of every kind. I’m all for health and wellbeing. I will take care of my skin, my body and health. But I am mindful that aging is a privilege. I have earned my laughter lines. My face, my body tell the story of the years, the tears and the laughter in-between. So, I’m embracing each day as it comes, and if I get an invisibility cloak from unwanted attention at the advanced age of 46 it’s not a bad side effect!