INVISIBLE TO MEN... AND I ADORE IT!
Like many women, Maggie spent decades fretting about the impression she made on men. Here, she shares the glorious liberation of finally being past caring
‘ It feels good to be out of the great female competition’
ON FACEBOOK, for all eternity, is a video of me in an outfit made from tinfoil, paper and bin liners, miming to Gloria Gaynor’s I am What I am.
It wasn’t taken at a student party in the eighties, but at the pub quiz in my local a few weeks ago. The final round was a lip-sync competition, and I won it.
The pub posted a video of it online — and do I care that I look utterly ridiculous for all to see? not in the slightest. I even had my flabby upper arms on show.
Why don’t I care? because I am now old enough to be officially ‘invisible’ to men, and I have never felt more free to do whatever I damn well like.
admittedly, I’ve always loved a fancy dress party, but looking good in the costume was always more important than its wit or originality. because, like all women, I lived with that indefinable sense of judgment, the knowledge that you are always being evaluated — by other women as well as men — on a very real sliding scale of attractiveness and appropriateness.
I even clung to my hard-won place in that hierarchy, fearing what might happen if I ‘let myself go’. When I turned 50, a year after Madonna, I was as determined as she was to prove that 50 was the new 30.
and so I flitted around London in silk dresses and high heels. I was even working as Style editor for a website called High50, dedicated to rebranding life’s sixth decade as super-cool. My boss and I agreed we felt pretty much the same as the night we met in The Groucho club in our 20s, but a bit more fabulous.
Then something happened. Five years passed and, at the age of 55, I was standing at the top of the stairs in Whistles’ flagship store when I suddenly realised I couldn’t be bothered to walk down to see what treasures were on the lower floor. not because I was particularly tired or anything was hurting. I just didn’t want to. AFTER a lifetime of treating clothes shopping as a survival essential up there with food, water and breathing, I realised that even if the Holy Grail of magic, slimming, bum-lifting jeans was down there, I couldn’t hack it. They could stay there.
Furthermore, I was wearing birkenstock sandals in the West end. That was the exact moment I understood something fundamental had changed. It wasn’t just that I didn’t wear high heels in the day any more. I felt older. Properly, unarguably older.
Sure, I have a few more aches, although 35 years of yoga mostly keeps them in their place.
but, basically, the difference was that I was more interested in heading to the Pret a Manger opposite for a cup of tea and a look at Instagram than flailing around for new clothes. It’s a gradual, but complete, shift in attitude that, another five years on, I’ve finally come to understand.
now, I see that my pal and I missed the point by celebrating feeling sexy at 50. a few years later is when reality strikes. by 55, you realise you have almost certainly passed life’s half way point.
but, for me, after the initial shock wore off, something marvellous happened. It was no longer possible to spin or burnish the truth: I was getting older. and this realisation gave me an amazing new feeling of freedom that has brought all kinds of benefits.
as a properly older woman, I was completely relieved of those expectations that drag female lives down from the moment we reach puberty. It’s like I can finally breathe out. The ‘invisibility’ that famously besets women past childbearing age turns out not to be a curse at all, but a superpower. If no one is looking at you, then it doesn’t matter what you look like, or what you do.
I don’t think twice about dining alone, or striding into a party solo. I don’t agonise over what people think of me or how I look.
at 50, I’d never have dreamed of wearing a bikini on the beach, even just with family. now I don’t think twice. I even wore one recently, for a national magazine photoshoot — and it was a hoot.
I’m not about to start dressing like one of those arty women in outlandish hats, giant earrings and clashing colours who are held up as icons of older style, but I love my khaki jacket (Topshop) customised with lots of patches and badges and my nearly-leather leggings (H&M).
I feel cool the way I dress these days, in a way I haven’t since I was very young. It gives me a sense of bravado swaggering around in paint-spattered jeans and a lowslung studded belt, Lurex socks with a pair of clogs. I push it much more than I used to, when I had a proper job as editor of elle and felt I had to be a grown-up.
now I can just be me — and, if people my own age think I’m weird, I don’t care. I get respect from much younger women who ask me things like where I got my signature belt. They love it when I reply: ‘a sex shop in the Latin Quarter of Paris . . . in about 1985.’
Likewise, my hair has been highlighted blonde since I was 22, but now I’m mixed grey, with a white strip at the front. It saves a great deal of time and even more money. My teenage daughter says it’s cool and my husband loves it — and he really doesn’t hold back when he doesn’t like something, such as my bright red trousers.
Funnily enough, I’m getting more compliments on my hair than I’ve had for years. Sometimes, I wonder if people are just being kind and patronising to the old dear, but if they are, I don’t give a toss.
This state of tosslessness has another unexpected benefit, because there is nothing more appealing than people who are comfortable with themselves. I don’t mean sexual appeal — the whole point of this life stage is that, free from that, people have the chance to like you for yourself.
I can chat freely to young men — friends and beaus of younger female relatives; a new trainee in the hairdressers; the chap helping the electrician in my kitchen fitout; the lovely young men who own the greengrocers — as an interesting, grown-up woman, not a tragic possible cougar.
The other day, I met an outstandingly good-looking young chap at a candle-making workshop (that rare black hair, dark blue eyes combination, which is so striking) and just had to say to him: ‘connor, you are so very beautiful.’ I had no other motive than wanting to pay him a compliment — he was also very charming and nice — and it was such a good feeling to know that I could do it without being misunderstood. He grinned and blushed a little.
Smart young women I’ve worked with recently see me as a wise elder they can confide in and learn from, rather than a prune-faced sexual rival. It feels good to be out of the great female competition, which silently rules our lives in so many subtle ways.
I’ve also noticed I have a different kind of exchange with a particular kind of man of my own age. Very cool and very concerned with being cool, they rate women on the same criteria as motorbikes, jackets and wireless speakers: are they rare? exclusive? Desired by other men? Would Steve McQueen have been impressed? — a scale I never did very well on.
Suddenly they’re quite interested in talking to me, as if I have gained some sort of Georgia o’keeffe weathered cool in their eyes.
one man of my acquaintance has been endearingly telling people how I was able to recite the alphabet backwards at high speed, without any practice (and after a few wines) when he challenged me to do it at a party.
He was impressed by my mental agility in a way he never would have been with my looks — and, when I was younger, that’s all he would have cared about. It seems that being invisible allows your mind to take centre stage.
So, if you’re feeling sick about turning 50 soon, don’t waste your precious energy worrying about it. Take it from me, once you hit 55 you’re on to the sweet spot. Like climbing up the final steps of a water slide and then, wheeeeeee!
Welcome to a world of fun you can only see once you’re invisible.
Maggie alderson’s book secret Keeping For Beginners is out now (HarperCollins).