Pop goes the culture: how books and TV let me down now I’m ‘middle-aged’
When I was 12, the mopey suburban angst of My So-Called Life made me feel less alone in the world, infinitely better about my sad pre-teen existence. In my 20s, before we realised it was problematic, Girls brought me characters I could sort-of relate to, who at least had thighs that looked like mine. Pop culture has always made me feel better.
Now I am in a place I never thought I would be. I am nearly 40, never married and child-free. There is very little to make me feel better about it. The film This Is 40 is not about being 40; it is a film about marriage and parenting teenagers. I am dreading Caitlin Moran’s next instalment of How To Be A Smug Heteronormative Woman. Catastrophe was quite funny, but being impregnated by attractive adult man Rob Delaney doesn’t really seem like such a catastrophe to me at this point.
All of my erstwhile role models for ‘what I might be like when I’m older’ now depress me beyond reasonable measure.
I thought I might one day be a cool mum like Lorelai Gilmore: she’s now seven years younger than me.
I wept — reader, literally wept — on my 38th birthday when I became officially older than sad grey-haired widow (albeit portrayed by Cher), Loretta Castorini in Moonstruck. Harry and Sally look like babies to me now.
Even the stuff that’s supposed to appeal to me at this point just doesn’t, because nobody seems to truly get it. There are all the posh girls who wrote memoirs about their ‘chaotic’ twenties, when everyone they knew bought a house in Stoke Newington except them (who are these people?), then they settled down (‘finally!!!’) with banker husbands and started writing about how hard it is having a baby. Incidentally, I spend a lot of time counselling my friends who find it difficult to have everything they ever wanted, mostly about how their husbands all annoy them and building side-return extensions is expensive. Incidentally, I also seem to have to buy them a lot more presents than they buy me.
Then there’s the popular zeitgeisty novel about female friendship that recently made me so angry I threw it across the room. Spoilers: the lesbian who panic-marries a man and has a baby realises that (phew) that was the right thing to do because having a baby is The Best; the infertile woman has a miracle baby the minute she stops being so uptight and naggy about it; and the one poor childless woman who spends her last conversation with her dying mother apologising for once having had an abortion, now spends her days staring longingly at children in the street. Oh, and these ‘best friends’ appeared to absolutely despise each other. The author is a woman roughly my age, and I found myself feeling sorry for her, because presumably she has never actually had a female friend.
I listened to a podcast by two fashion editors that is apparently about ‘midlife’. At first I wondered if I’d made a mistake and it was in fact a Dear Joan and Jericha-type parody. Apparently, it was not. I’m sure it’s useful if you need advice on parenting teenagers and labradors, keeping your ‘lovely’ husband happy, and wondering if you should spend lockdown in your London flat or country house. I only listened in the first place because Marian Keyes was a guest, and she can always be guaranteed to cheer me up, but they were so patronising and treated her as such a curiosity (‘you don’t actually have children, do you?’), I found myself wondering if she felt angry after the interview. Because I did.
There are a few things I have found comforting.
I bought a copy of Notes To Self by Emilie Pine for all my friends, but it also made me cry uncontrollably on a crowded train. Garance Doré writes very well on this topic and her newsletter often cheers me up.
Where is the bittersweet, joyous novel about the woman who maybe had a lot of trauma to deal with, so found herself a bit behind all her peers, but still has an interesting life filled with joy and friends she actually likes and nice holidays? Or all the women who are having a good time and doing good in the world and are OK with where they are? I want a book and a TV show, ideally loads of them, that make me feel less alone and make it look fun.
I’m going to have to write it, aren’t I?
Eleanor Wood is the author of STAUNCH (HQ/HarperCollins), a memoir about going travelling in India with her grandmother and great-aunts, and how spending time with her older relatives helped her to overcome late-thirties angst. You can mostly find her on Twitter and Instagram.
