Mid-Life Women Are Having A Time
Nic Kidman and I - and many of you - are going to see out the year-end on a high note!
Every year – every year! – it gets to a certain point in the summer season and I am forced to haul out my kaftans as workwear. My Women’s Health magazine team used to tease me about it. They knew the day the kaftan made its work debut that my brain was officially on holiday.
The only problem now is that this date has shifted earlier and earlier with every passing year. It used to hit around December 20. Soon, I never made it past the long weekend of December 16. Then it was sometime after the work Christmas party. Now its mid-November and I am already fully ensconced in my Annual Kaftan Era pretending like all hell that I am just days away from a holiday.
It is all lies OBVS. But I say: if you can’t fool yourself, then who can you fool? Or, as The Kids would say: you are gaslighting yourself. The Kids would also say: There’s a menty b* coming if I have to wear a bra all day, every day for the next six weeks. It is so sus* to have to still do that in December. Anyone my age still with me?
*Menty b: mental breakdown
*Suss: suspicious and/ or makes you uncomfortable
*See also (my other faves): Mid - mediocre; delulu - 🤪
Gen Z slang is my latest obsession thanks to all the memes of Old People – aka people my age with proper jobs – trying to talk the talk. Ironically of course. We are nothing if not in on the joke. Unlike our millennial counterparts. They are rarely in on the joke. Sorry millennials, but you know it’s true.
D'you know what else is true? I had an epiphany this week. I blame menopause for the fact that epiphanies are very thin on the ground around here. Anyhoo, my epiphany involved Nic Kidman.
Not too long ago I was havin’ a bit of a laugh about Nicole. She was (still is) everywhere. You couldn’t turn on a screen and there she was – with her perfect, immovable hair and slippery-as-glass immovable visage. Literally immobile, mildly startled, designer clad and generally speaking - as is so often with this oeuvre - starring as A Woman Of A Certain Age Who Is Going Through Something, but still looking immaculate while doing so.
The steadfastness with which she approached these stiff-upper-lipped characters seemed to rub off on her red carpet persona, but in a slightly delulu way. She was icy on the carpet, unless she was caught whispering what always looked to be drunkenly sexy sweet nothings in Keith Urban’s ear.
But something happened on the way to the end of this year - and Nicole Kidman just kinda leaned into it and in so doing, she did the impossible. She became fun! She laughed at herself. She threw off her heels to reach a short podium. She was in on the joke. She told reporters that she had orgasm burnout from her new erotic thriller. She decoded her own memes. And all I keep thinking is: about forking time!
Life can be exhausting, but there is zero doubt in my mind that life is forking exhausting when you are trying to Keep It All Together. It takes a certain wisdom of age and life experience to just decide: ‘fuck it!’ I am an early adopter. Nic was a late bloomer. But we all get there in the end. Us gals. And it thrills me beyond to watch her exhale.
She may still be playing the most uptight, enormously pulled-together (only on the outside) heroines, but it feels good to watch her having some fun with her icon status. Especially since Hollywood legend would have it that us lovely ladies pass our last shaggable day as we transition from 39 to 40, so lord knows what level of warty-nosed old hag one is considered to be as one sails from 49 into 50.
Nic is 57.
The current crop of mid-life TV babes are all Having Fun. And not playing grannies. And still being employed. I want to thank Bad Sisters for the sheer unbridled joy of watching said Woman Of A Certain Age (mine) having an absolute riot and getting up to all sorts of shit. The frontrunners were Donna And The Dynamos on Mama Mia. The back-up crew, most recently, were the no-filler, no-collagen, no-boob-job, no-Brazilian-wax women of Disney+ Rivals. I adored them too.
For those of you who haven’t watched Bad Sisters, it’s on Apple TV and season two has just landed. Season one saw the five Irish sisters plot to murder their entirely villainous brother-in-law. Its dark and hilariously funny and each of the sisters is marvellous with great dialogue to boot. Season two? Safe to say, its equally marvellous but I have only just got stuck in. I was busy watching another Woman Of A Certain Age, Cate Blanchett, in Disclaimer.
Does smashing so many just-launched series into this newsie tell you something about how much procrastinating I am doing, work-wise? It probably does. Let’s hope no one reading this is employing me! I swear that the work is being done in-between all the other bits. The other bits involve: ripping off bra; donning kaftan; drinking cold wine; swearing to friends about how hot it is and binge watching these series until late in the night.
I fully endorse early-onset Kaftan Season. Cheers!