I remember that day, in late 2008, when I walked into a bookstore and saw Jennifer Aniston on the cover of GQ. Yes, that cover. She was sitting on the floor, toned legs crossed, wearing nothing but a man’s tie around her neck. When I opened the magazine, I almost gasped when I read she was about to turn 40.
Growing up, this was not how most of us pictured women of a certain age. When I was a kid, magazine covers rarely featured a model over 30 unless she was wearing a crown or standing next to her politician husband. My mother’s generation got even more screwed-up signals about getting older. For instance, when Anne Bancroft portrayed Mrs. Robinson in 1967’s The Graduate, the actress was only 35—because God forbid we saw the bare legs of an actual 45-year-old on film.
We didn’t know it back in 2008, but Aniston was just getting warmed up with her little aging-backward trick. These days, she continues to defy the laws of gravity, fitness and career trajectory. She showed us that, during this thing called midlife, you can wear anything you want (or nothing at all). That you don’t need kids or a life partner to be fulfilled. That you can be the leading lady in a rom-com, or the star of your self-produced TV series. And that you can grow your hair as long as you damn well please. I remain in awe.
But it’s not just Jen.
All you have to do is look at some of the celebrities who are now 40, 50 and older to see that aging isn’t what it used to be. Today’s midlife mamas are serving as global ambassadors for companies (Cate Blanchette), reaching the pinnacle of physical fitness (Halle Berry), attaining new career heights (Viola Davis, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Oh), even running their own corporations that they eventually sell for $900 million (Reese Witherspoon).
And then there’s Jennifer Lopez. In 2019, the year she reached her half-century birthday, we all watched in admiration as she produced, starred and pole-danced in Hustlers, embarked on a world tour, and secured a gig to perform at the Super Bowl the following year. She impressed so many of us that a popular meme comparing J.Lo to Rue McLanihan from Golden Girls emerged.
Not bad for a 50-year-old.
At this point, we need to stop being shocked at how energetic, driven and inspirational midlife women can be.
But let’s not give all the credit to celebs.
Let’s face it, these famous women have access to an entourage of trainers, stylists, makeup artists and nutritionists, so it’s easier for them to be badass. But I know so many real-life women who are also rewriting the midlife playbook. And it goes much, much deeper than looking great.
Many of the friends in my age group are on fire with career and personal ambitions. Sure, there are some who are fantasizing about quitting their 9-to-5 gig and retiring on a beach in Mexico. But I can’t count the number of 40-plus women around me who are launching companies, going back to school, switching careers, moving to new cities, training for marathons, starting new relationships and embarking on other adventures. Some are even entering the political arena (perhaps inspired by another 50-something force of nature who just became the first female U.S. vice president).
I’ve been considering why this current crop of women feels more vibrant and driven than the same group a generation or two ago. Are we working harder, or did we stumble upon the fountain of youth?
It is true that over the past couple of decades there have been huge advances in the health and beauty industries that make it easier for us to feel and look our best (even when we make the empowering decision to let our hair go gray). reliable information about what to eat and how to stay fit than our mothers and grandmothers did. (They were told dietary fat was bad and margarine was good, and went to ladies-only gyms to stand on a machine that claimed to burn fat with a vibrating belt.)
I also believe that many of us feel powerful because there is more inspiration around us. As more females take the helm of media and entertainment companies, as they become CEOs and political leaders, we are witnessing the full range of possibilities. Check out any streaming service these days and you’ll see that actresses over a certain age are no longer relegated to playing the frumpy mom or the “older lady” sidekick. Both onscreen and off, women in their 40s, 50s and beyond are the leading ladies, starring in their own adventures and playing roles once delegated to men or younger women. And they’re still learning and evolving, like the confused but open-minded characters in Julie Delpy’s series On the Verge.
Still, we can’t do it all. And that’s OK.
Equally energizing is the fact that we are no longer conforming to the path society traditionally laid out for us. Yes, we were told we could “do it all,” but that backfired and left us exhausted. But we were also the first group to design our own timelines for having (or not having) children, getting educated, starting careers, and finding a life partner. If you look at the 40-to-60-year-old demographic, it includes the youngest of the Boomers and the oldest of the Millennials, who have just entered their 40s; most of us are Gen Xers who fall somewhere in the middle. But any of us on that spectrum can be in the same life phase at any given time.
For example, a 45-year-old woman can be just starting her family or sending a child off to college. She may be launching a business, going back to school, or thinking about retiring. We are designing a life on our own terms, just as men have always done.
Finally, I do think we are young at heart because we’ve lived through a lot—9/11, multiple recessions, and now a global pandemic, to name just a few pivotal events—so we have experience overcoming setbacks. We may also have a little PTSD after spending periods of time catching up on the career front. We are acutely aware that we can’t take anything for granted, so we are more diligent about staying healthy, staying on top of our finances, and staying focused on our ambitions. Mind you, we can also put a lot of pressure on ourselves, which is something we’ll be talking about a lot here and on the MB podcast.
Bottom line, ladies, is that one knows what to make of us—don’t you love it? And the best part is, we don’t need to pose naked on a magazine cover to keep them guessing. We just have to keep doing what we’re doing, enjoying our lives and making plans for the next big thing. And definitely ignoring anyone who tells us to pack it in.
