One (more) powerful trick, which will stop you women going invisible at 45
I missed it off my original list. Soz! Now: I rectify that!
Six months ago, I wrote this piece, exposing the flagrant F**KING RAGING OH DO F**K OFF WON’T YOU lie of the idea women just POUFF! Go invisible, in or around their mid forties. That we become so irrelevant in the eyes of society, it doesn’t even bother resting those eyes upon us. We effectively vanish. Fade to grey, to wispy translucent unfanciable, barely employable, unremarked upon physical and social irrelevance. We: fester away, ignored and unserved, at the bar, we are pushed aside off pavements and into oncoming traffic.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah BLEURGH LIES! Damn LIES!
It hasn’t happened to me, or half the women I know, despite everyone (even other women, especially other women) insisting it would. But - nah mate. Because, I am seen and I am served and I am minded! Every bit as much as I ever was. I make sure of it.
And honestly, it wouldn’t matter at all - it’d just be some daft, mean fairy story women tell each other for scares in the queue for a latte - except that some women are buying into it, which makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Cos she who believes herself to be already invisible, moves through the world like that. Slumped and unsure. Un-proud. Uninviting of attention. While she who knows it to be ragin bullshit, does not. She swaggers. She slinks. She meets the world’s gaze - which she knows to still be upon her.
So yeah. I wrote about that. About how to feel, and move, and be like I do, as I am - IE mega visible - and not as those who peddle the myth of invisibility (most of whom are other women BTW) would have you feel. And I stand by every last word of it, except that the new season of Sex And The City sequel And Just Like That…, or rather, the commentary surrounding SATC-sequel the new season of And Just Like That… has made me realise I made one glaring omission in my otherwise pretty definitive list of How Not To Go Invisible Over 45.
I will herewith rectify that.