Why does no one fancy me anymore?

A post about the invisibility of middle age.

I used to play a game with my kids where I’d make up a tray of random objects; a crayon, a beaker, a fancy feather, a spoon, and they’d have to memorise what was there. I’d take an object away and ask them to tell me what was missing. The more humdrum and banal the object, the harder it was to spot that it had gone. This is what aging is like when you’re a woman. One day you’re an object of interest, a brightly coloured feather perhaps, bright and eye-catching, easy to spot and effortlessly memorable, heads swivelling round to watch as you flutter past. Then one day, without you even noticing that it’s happened, you’re a spoon. You’ve been removed from the tray and no one notices that you’re gone. You’re invisible. Nobody looks anymore and nobody cares.

At first it’s just an inkling. The faint absence of a change in energy when you enter a room. A vague feeling that something has irrevocably altered. You tell yourself you’d still be an object of interest if it weren’t for the pesky patriarchy, meddling in women’s lives, telling us we have no worth after the age of forty. You tell yourself you should be grateful to be beyond the male gaze. Thankful that these vain and petty burdens are no longer yours to bear. At least my husband is quite fond of me, I try and console myself, but he’s even older than I am, so he clearly doesn’t count. Also, he’s levelling up as he ages because of that patriarchy thing I mentioned, which just rubs salt into my middle aged wounds.

 “Why does being fancied even matter at all?” So says the muffled cry of my feminism, as I jam a cushion down on her face. Because it’s nice, dammit. I kind of get the same kick nowadays when someone tells me they like my shoes. (Oh dear Lord, is that as basic as I am? Am I a shoe?) Scooby Doo and Shaggy have ripped off patriarchy’s mask, to reveal my crumpled face beneath. Oh hi. It was me all along.

This isn’t what I ordered and I have questions. Why does no one fancy me anymore? Why are grey hairs the consistency and texture of pubes? Why does my face crinkle up like a well used road map whenever I smile? Why do I need the services of a chiropractor just because I fell asleep on the sofa? Why can’t I handle my drink anymore? Why do my teenagers thrive on a diet of Doritos and cans of Monster, whilst my digestive system thinks it’s going into full-blown anaphylactic shock if I forgo my daily mug of peppermint tea? Why does the thought of being in a busy city centre pub on a Saturday night make me break out into a cold sweat? All these whys are clearly the answer to my first why: it’s why no one fancies me anymore.

Born in 1979, I straddle the breach between two generational categories, which means I get to choose. My son calls me a millennial but only as an insult, because he says it with derision as he laughs <in Gen Alpha Skibidi Toilet>. So I’m eschewing geriatric millennial status and embracing baby Gen Xer instead, though in truth I fit neither. I’m too young to have worn flares as a child or watched Tiswas but I’m old enough to have had my childhood ears assaulted by Stock, Aiken and Waterman, long before Rickrolling was a thing. I had posters of the Gallagher brothers and the cast of Trainspotting on my teenage walls, and was nearly old enough to have voted in the 1997 General Election, turning 18 the day after the Labour landslide. Apparently, the nineties were the best of days, but because I was a teenager I hated everything, starting with myself. Inexplicably, people fancied me back then.

I guess my level of attractiveness would probably be best described as pleasantly average. Mr Darcy would have found me tolerable, I suppose, but perhaps not tempting enough to please him. In the absence of being a ten out of ten, you’re forced to cultivate other gardens. I leaned heavily on honing my humour and sarcasm and I had a raft of older male relatives who taught me how to play cricket and pool, down pints of beer, and who forced me to develop an in-depth knowledge of Premier League football. All useful gardens for attracting males in the 1990s.

Youth has its own beauty of course, regardless of the relative attractiveness of the bearer. To the old, youth is beautiful because it’s fresh and as yet unspoiled by life. Skin is taut and defies gravity. Cheeks are plumpish and rosy. Eyes are clear and uncynical. Youth is beautiful, I know this because I live in a house with four young people who are effortlessly beautiful, and not just because they’re mine. They wear their beauty in ignorance like a lanyard they’ve worn daily and have forgotten to take off. It’s just who and what they are. They wander about the house in various states of undress, skinny limbs and midriffs on show, being all young and lithe, springing up out of chairs and climbing the stairs without making humiliating grunting noises, flaunting their synovial privilege. Everyone older than them is a primordial husk, a warped reality which seems to be true no matter how old you are; we look at people who are older than us and we see our future. We see decay and the relentless march of time that we’d rather not acknowledge. Those further along the road than ourselves confront us with the truth that even in the midst of life we are in death. No wonder we no longer want to look.

Despite your best efforts at cultivation, you might find that by the time you’re into your forties you’re dealing with an overgrown, weed infested, heavy soiled mess of a plot. You might regret carelessly neglecting it since your youth when your beauty was more celebrated and sustaining attention was as easy as just showing up somewhere and being female. But despite these challenges, there are gifts and little hidden treasures to be unearthed during this season. You really do discover this as you’re getting your hands dirty in the trenches of midlife, finally rotavating your neglected plot of dirt, turning everything over and seeing what’s been buried all these years. You might not be old yet, but midlife is the brow of the hill from where you can see the finish line in the distance. Now is the time to grab a spade and start digging. I’ve also discovered that Monty Don was right: whatever life throws at you, always make sure you have plenty of grit.

Growing older with someone else and living out the vows you made when you were richer in years and healthier in collagen, is also a comfort when things inevitably become poorer and generally worse, at least in the elastin stakes. If you’ve chosen well, you’ll have someone to tell you, as my husband tells me, that he loves every line on my face because I earned each and every one of them by spending twenty years laughing with him.

The proof of everything I’m describing here is best summed up by an ordinary encounter I had recently. On the hottest day this year I was unlucky enough to be on a packed train travelling home from London Euston. Every seat was taken and every aisle and corridor was full of sweating, standing bodies, including mine. I was stood next to a young woman, who was probably about the same age as one of my daughters, around twenty. Men, older than me, were rushing to offer her a seat. She, obviously brought up to respect the elderly, took pity on me: “Do you want to sit down?” She said with some concern at the sight of my flushed, perspiring face. I nodded in relief, profusely and dodderingly grateful: “Thank you dear…it’s been 84 years.”

I crammed myself into the seat, to the obvious disappointment of the man next to me who presumably had been hoping that the fit young lass would be sat next to him and now had to make do with me and my subpar gamete game and depleting oestrogen levels. He bristled with disappointment, while I sat there with my bags on my lap, feeling like I was taking up as much space as Charlie Bucket’s grandmas in the giant iron bedstead. He proceeded to ignore me and carried on chatting with the man opposite, and neither of them attempted to engage me in conversation, but then I’d neglected to bring my ear trumpet with me, so I might have missed it.

The train moistly rumbled on, and the young woman continued to be an object of interest to some of the men around her. A group of noisy young lads who had squashed themselves onto the train, started vying for her attention like a bunch of unruly schnauzers. L’eau de Stella Artois permeated the atmosphere like a pungent cloud. The young woman determinedly stared at her phone, ignoring the verbal dick swinging carrying on around her. They kept deliberately bumping into her and then loudly blaming each other: “Fuck’s sake bro! Sorry love. Sorry!” The young woman looked up from her phone and gave me a long-suffering, beseeching look, and I remembered in that moment that invisibility is quite the gift.

I returned the look with one which sought to say, “I know.” But I wanted to say so much more than that. I know means I was once like you. I know means I understand what it’s like to be an unwilling participant in a mating ritual you didn’t sign up for. I know means I’m sorry it’s like this, but it always was and it probably always will be. I know means I’m grateful I’m no longer you. I know also means “I’ve got your back and I’ll kick him in the balls if you want me to.”

Like a mumsy Zorro I wanted to scoop up the young woman into my shopping bag, away from prying eyes, but failing that I gave the nearest drunken idiot a look so withering and full of menacing contempt that I swore I heard a sizzling noise as it landed, as if the layers of his face had melted away like he’d just seen the ark of the covenant. It was a look which said, if you touch her again I’m going to go the hell off. Wisely, he and his mates piped down.

The train arrived at Birmingham New Street and the young woman picked up her case. “Thank you” she mouthed at me as she left, squeezing past the tightly packed males, whose eyes followed her progress every step of the way. Being low-key sexually harassed shouldn’t be the price you have to pay for being young and fanciable. Why does no one fancy me anymore is a rhetorical question with an answer I’m too old to care about. Mostly.

The train finally arrived in Crewe, and as I exited the station, a homeless man followed my progress down the road with an interested, beer be-goggled eye. “I like you,” he slurred at me, enthusiastically raising his can of Skol in tribute as I passed him. Yep, I thought, as I fluttered off down the road. Still got it.

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If you liked this piece, you’ll enjoy my book. It’s about midlife and menopause from a faith perspective and it’s available to pre-order now. Out on October 24th. Click on the link below! (Also available from all other bookstores.)

Thanks for reading. All the best,