The other day we had dinner with a friend who is in her 20s. She is 30 years younger than me and faces a number of challenges that come with her age: identity, the pressure of expectations and the whole weight of the question “who do I want to be?”
There is the hustle and bustle of making one’s place in the world while struggling to survive, the terrible, endless effort of putting on the show of life.
Then she sighed, “I’m sorry. This must sound pathetic considering what women your age have to deal with.”
Confused, I replied, “Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t go back to being 23 for anything. Being a young woman is horrible.”
He looked at me in disbelief. This was not what he expected.
Hannah Betts, 53, says she wouldn’t be 23 again for anything and that being a young woman is “horrendous”
The beauty expert, pictured in her 20s, believes this, her 50s, is “my best decade yet”
Midlife is supposed to be excruciating: the beginning of the end, especially for women. Society tells us that 50 is a car crash of loss: loss of looks, loss of power, and loss of intelligence. After 50, we are done, exhausted, lurching downhill into inevitable decline.
But I told him straight up that I’d rather be 53 than 23. This is my best decade yet. Make no mistake: I’m not saying 50 is the new 20. I’m saying 50 is nothing like 20 — that’s what makes it so great.
A woman’s 20s are a time of struggle, with the pressure of figuring out what she wants out of life, of “going the distance,” with the added burden of people trying to have sex with you or crush you, always craving your attention and getting in your way.
That’s my experience, and my friend’s troubles suggest that, despite MeToo and the unstoppable tide of fifth-wave feminism, very little has changed.
I was a mess at her age: poor, overwhelmed, disoriented by so many epic options.
I should have felt the world was at my feet. Instead, I was in the wrong job, being paid a pittance as an Oxford academic. Even when I found my way into journalism, aged 28, I was flitting from flat to flat in London, trapped in the uncertainty of rent and rootlessness. Working like a Trojan, day and night, was the only solace I knew.
As for the youthful attractiveness that is supposed to be the pinnacle of a woman’s existence, I never knew what to do with it.
I found it confusing to be considered attractive when I didn’t feel that way, at worst threatening. I was frequently followed and stalked by men I knew and complete strangers.
Relationships brought their own problems. I still have nightmares about having to choose between two 28-year-old boys, both (if I had realized) totally wrong for me in terms of character, beliefs, and what they demanded of me.
I naively got caught up with men who harassed me and were nasty guys. Raised on novels, I was young enough to think it was “romantic” when men declared love at first sight, rather than the correct response of “maniac.” That’s how I ended up dating a guy who threatened to kill us both when I broke up.
At this stage in her life, Hannah feels like she has her ‘coordinates: I know what my life looks like.’
At 28, I had left my first major relationship and had no idea how to behave as a single woman. I knew I had never wanted to get married, but many men seemed to expect it and assumed I longed to be a mother – concepts that seemed as alien as they were anachronistic.
Contrast this with the joyous ease with which I met my current partner ten years ago, when we were both comfortable with who we were. I adore him and he adores me, and it’s not just luck. We put in the work.
Now, at 53, I have my coordinates: I know what my life is like. As for my state of mind, after a life of depression, I am closer to happiness than ever, thanks to half a century of self-knowledge.
I finally have a mortgage, after struggling to get a deposit until I was 47. We have a lovely little flat with a spectacular garden. In our dog, Pimlico, I have the blue whippet I always dreamed of. My friends are amazing, my job is interesting and I am in good health.
I’m old and ugly enough to not have complexes, and I don’t always try to please others. I’ve learned to say “no.”
Honestly, it’s absolutely wonderful. Here’s the secret that no one tells you: for women in particular, things get better (and much better) with each passing year.
Many men feel they lose status in midlife, aware that they have not achieved all they hoped at work, less able to attract women and less able to perform when they do. They buy sports cars to ease the angst of midlife, while we enjoy a better life than ever.
This is why patriarchal society relies on the myth of the broken-down, impotent, and ultimately barking middle-aged woman: an attempt to diminish us just when we are reaching our prime.
While I do not dismiss the work of current menopause activists, there is a sense in which their fight to break taboos has contributed to a societal phobia towards femininity, where fertility is no longer the defining characteristic.
It’s become all too easy to appropriate their labors for the cultural stereotype of the old crone, when in fact, there’s a reason we refer to menopause as “the change” and not “the end.”
Hannah’s friends also admit that they prefer a quiet middle age to the tumult of her 20s.
I’m not saying that middle age doesn’t bring challenges. The idea that one can rest on one’s laurels when it comes to one’s career is ridiculous. Instead, one is forced to work harder than ever, even though one’s stamina is waning.
Still, I can hold my own and put up with less bullshit. I know what I’m willing to do and what I’m not.
Obviously, not everyone in their 50s has a happy life. There are those who are sick, facing onerous responsibilities, or facing overwhelming financial hardships. Not having children, I don’t have to deal with troubled teenagers; and, since my parents died almost a decade ago, I no longer have to take on nursing while working full time.
Still, even friends who find themselves in these situations admit that they prefer a quiet middle age to the hectic twenties. It’s not that we think our life is wonderful, but that it is distinctly our own.
Yet no matter how emotionally, professionally and financially successful we are at age 50, we are still told that nothing will make up for our loss of youthful beauty.
This could never make me feel helpless, only relieved.
I can’t begin to explain how liberating it is to have less male attention, when so much of it involved putting yourself in danger, not listening to you, or being an obstacle.
I no longer have to deal with lies about my sex life created to undermine me at work, or jealous rivals claiming I flirted to get a job.
I once asked a colleague why he said we’d slept together, and he shrugged: “I thought it would enhance my career.”
Meanwhile, older women can no longer tell me that I must be stupid because of my looks.
There is nothing more satisfying than trading the fleeting glamour of youth for the true power of an adult, as a human being, as a parent, or as some professional colossus who smashed his head through the glass ceiling and then made earrings from its shards.
At the same time, I really like my current appearance, even though it has lost its charm. My face was like a cloud, amorphous, formless; now it has edge, character.
Don’t let society sell you the lie that getting rid of fleeting beauty is life’s great tragedy: it’s a joy.
First of all, it’s a fantastic way to distinguish between the sheep and the goats: the men and women you’re attracted to now are superior in every way to those idiots who were seduced by the fleeting glow of youth.
So here’s what I told my young friend: ‘Honey, here’s the secret that no one tells you. All the things that bother you now – your job, your sexuality, your friends, your ability to earn money, your family, the size of your thighs – these things won’t be solved by the time you’re 30, but over time, they’ll be pretty much in place.
‘Life will become easier and you will be smarter simply by having more experience. Smarter and less likely to get hurt.
“Not only will it be okay, but it will get better and better. At my age, you’ll finally be somewhere, but there’s still a long way to go.”
A version of this article first appeared on: hannahbetts.substack.com