Can women ever stop giving a f*ck?
It's a myth that we can magically stop caring what society thinks of us. So here's an alternative...
How many fucks do you give on a daily basis? By which I mean, how often do you worry about what people think of you, or care how they might react to something you do?
By now, newly 40, I expected to be pretty much fuck free. Having spent much of my life tied up in knots about other people’s opinions of me - worrying about being wrong in some indefinable way - I thought liberation would be mine. That’s what we’re told isn’t it? That as you approach midlife, you simply stop sweating the small stuff and learn to identify what really counts. Tricky friendships, office politics, self doubt, social media likes … it all just matters less. Time to put on a Prue Leith style chunky necklace and dance to your own tune, freed from the burden of other people’s opinions and society’s expectations. You go girl.
Except, despite having a reasonable amount of life experience and going through enough grief to understand what a privilege it is to grow old, I still give a damn about getting grey hairs and looking good in slinky dresses (I wore Spanx on a photoshoot just this morning) - alongside, y’know, caring deeply about gender equality and geopolitics. I can’t stop giving a fuck. What’s going on?
A few days ago, while on a solo trip to Madrid (let me know if you want a guide in the comments), I had this exact conversation with one of the city’s hottest new female chefs. I’d walked past her buzzy, neighbourhood restaurant and was drawn inside, where I sat at the bar eating incredible Middle Eastern-inspired food and chatting to her. She was about to celebrate her 41st birthday. “Isn’t it great?” she said, pausing with her knife in the air and pulling up her baseball cap to look me in the eye. “The best thing is that you just don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks any more.”
I nodded furiously in agreement (my mouth being full of octopus salad), because I was talking to a cool and talented woman, on whom I wanted to make a good impression. So much for not giving a fuck what other people think of me, eh?
It’s a bit of a movement, this ‘older women don’t give a flying fuck’ thing. There are role models in the form of Miriam Margolyes and the late Iris Apfel. We’re told that it’s a superpower and a sign of innate strength. It’s something we should be striving for; the emotional equivalent of being a girlboss.
But is it realistic? And can women actually afford not to care?
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