Q. Lately I’ve started to suspect I’m becoming invisible. Not in a cool “Harry Potter cloak” way. More in the “middle-aged woman no longer perceived by society” sense. I walk into a shop and the assistant breezes past me to help someone in gym leggings and lip filler. At work younger colleagues finish my sentences as if I’m a slightly confused aunt. Even automatic doors hesitate.
I’ve recently turned 50 and apparently that’s the age when women — especially — start blending into the wallpaper. I still make an effort: I’ve got good hair, decent shoes, I remember to exfoliate — but it’s like the world has quietly decided I’m surplus to requirements. I’m not ready to fade out like the end credits of a BBC drama.
I know I should rise above it. Be wise. Be dignified. Bake sourdough and embrace linen. But if I’m honest, I miss being REALLY seen. I don’t want to pretend I don’t care, because I do care — even if I know it’s deeply uncool to admit it.
So tell me, how do you grow older with a bit of grace — and preferably without having to take up cold-water swimming or start a podcast?
A. Thank you for this wonderful, painfully funny and all-too-relatable letter. The way you write — sharp, witty, honest — is anything but invisible. You leap off the page. And yet I hear the ache underneath your humour: the feeling of being overlooked, dismissed, edited out of your own story.
