This week I met up with a friend and suggested that it would be nice to go out and catch up, as we hadn’t seen each other in a while. Finding a mutually agreeable date was surprisingly easy.
The challenge was to agree on a suitable time, since it turns out that my friend doesn’t want to eat anything after 8 pm.
Not because she’s caught the intermittent fasting bug, but because, as she explained, eating “late” no longer suits her “aging digestive system” (FYI, her gut just turned 52).
“I’m sorry, Ange,” he began. “But I can’t eat at that time of night. You know how it is when we get older…”
Gray hair and wrinkles are much less aging than being surrounded by women who rush the process with this self-sacrificing approach.
Not really. The irony is that my friend is in excellent health. Her skin is wrinkle-free, her hair is shiny and she is very slim, although that could be because her last meal of the day is no later than the children’s tea time. She could easily pass for someone in her 40s.
However, like an increasing number of women I know, she is aging out of a self-determined willingness to behave, to put it crudely, like an old woman.
Why does it bother me? After all, Mother Nature, that most deceitful of females, reminds us time and again of the aging process: from the expanding abdomen of menopause to aching joints.
But I dare say that gray hair and wrinkles cause much less aging than being surrounded by women who accelerate the process with this self-sacrificing approach.
Take another friend, who is about to turn 50. She refuses to leave the house (let alone go out for dinner) if it means getting home later than 9 p.m. “I like to curl up in bed. Don’t you feel a lot more tired these days? We’re getting into that age of hibernation and comfort.”
It’s a ridiculous feeling. I felt much more exhausted in my 30s, when I was trying to juggle my work as a journalist and presenter with raising four children. Now, at 57 and with our brood now homeless, I feel like I’m just getting started.
I love the fact that I have the freedom to hop on trains from my hometown of Manchester to take on broadcasting jobs in London or writing assignments that take me further afield.
This is my time. Why on earth would I want to go to bed before the kids who are still in the cafeteria or at soccer practice?
One of my coworkers is accelerating the aging process in a different, though in my opinion equally depressing, way.
At 52, she is funny, witty and fabulous company. But she has decided that “at her age” there is no need to worry too much about her appearance.
I used to be one of those people who had an enviable, effortless style. My fashion choices resulted in fabulous combinations, such as pairing the perfect shade of burnt orange shirt with wide-leg jeans and stiletto heels.
But now she’s decided that comfort trumps style, insisting on wearing hideous shoes that look like tissue boxes. (“Who cares if callus padding isn’t sexy?” she says in a maddening tone.)
She also now insists on pairing dresses and skirts with support stockings, which make her legs look like sausages.
And then there’s her hair, which she’s rarely styled. I recently saw her at a wedding and she had it up in a ponytail. Admiring my newly coiffed locks, she commented, “Oh, I just couldn’t be bothered to sit for years under the hairdryer,” before adding that at her age (that phrase again!) “no one would notice her anyway.”
Angela Epstein has decided to give a wide berth to all women who repeat over and over again phrases such as “not at my age”, “I’m too old for this” or “I’d rather stay home and have a cup of tea”.
Tell that to someone like Dame Joan Collins, 91 years old and glamorous.
Or rather, tell me about it. That night I put on a teal sequin dress from the River Island sale and danced until the band played their last chords.
The irony of those who take a self-proclaimed ageist approach is that it is already well known that women of a certain age begin to feel invisible.
We all know that society can be brutal when it comes to compartmentalizing the female sex.
For example, a 2019 study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that actresses over 50 are often relegated to supporting roles or consistently portrayed as grumpy, dowdy or senile.
So why encourage that view?
I should point out that it can also be the actions of younger women – between 30 and 40 years old – that make us, “older women”, feel our age. Especially when we are around those who act in a closed group.
A 57-year-old friend often complains about this dynamic in her wider circle: “I always feel like these women are talking to me like they’re doing charity work. They’re younger, thinner, and all very self-assured. They make me feel old.”
For the record, this group of entitled people is no more than five or ten years younger than her. What’s more, my friend is successful, intelligent, has a wealth of life experience, and could outshine any of them in terms of humor, intellect, or good conversation. It’s her defeatism that’s depressing and ageing.
It’s not about ignoring aging, but about reinterpreting it with a sense of enthusiasm and rediscovery.
Just look at Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate in the United States, who, at 59, is the young woman competing against Donald Trump, 78.
Or TV presenter Davina McCall, recently photographed in a tiny ruby red bikini and matching ankle boots, confirming that she refuses to dress or act her age.
Now 56, he said: “It’s like having a second chance at life, and we’re making kids see that second chance.”
That’s why I’ve decided to give a wide berth to all the women I know who repeatedly say things like “not at my age,” “I’m too old for this,” or “I’d rather stay home and have a cup of tea.”
They make me want to run, or at least walk briskly, a mile.
Time doesn’t wait for any menopausal woman. So why start suddenly? If you want to have dinner at 5pm, go to bed a few hours later and donate your heels to a museum, that’s your choice.
But as long as there is breath in my body and late reservations at restaurants, it will never be mine.
