HRT: HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF
There are now 10 million women over the age of 50 in the UK – that’s 17 per cent of the population . . . and rising. By the year 2000, that 10 million will have become 14 million. Middle-aged women nowadays are a group with changed expectations. The menopause may have been hidden for our mothers and grandmothers, but not for us. We are no longer willing to be silent on important aspects of our lives, whether it is employment opportunities, taxation, child care, equal rights and responsibilities, or anything medical. We expect our doctors to be well-informed, and to share that information with us as equals. We may still get the flushes, the sweats, and perhaps eventually the osteoporosis, but now we know what causes them, and that they can be prevented – or at least reduced. It needn’t be the same for us as it was for our mothers.
This is now a good time for women of 50-ish and more to assert themselves, to make themselves visible. A woman reaching her fiftieth birthday in the mid-1990s is part of the post-war baby boom, who, to the envy of her children, was right there in the Swinging Sixties. She is part of such a large population bulge that she is being noticed. Advertisers reach out to her, car insurance companies devise special policies for her, she can buy magazines aimed at her age group, and she can join dubs that bear no resemblance to the local Darby and Joan. If it was good to be a young woman in the Sixties, it’s just as good to be a middle-aged woman now. There have never been more examples of women in their forties, fifties, and beyond, who are attractive and confident, pursuing exciting, demanding careers, often earning more than their husbands do, real Women at the Top.
Other people’s attitudes towards you may change as you get older, but they will only belittle you if you let them. You will only be ignored if you let yourself be.
‘I went into a restaurant with my elderly mother, and we started to sit down at one of the many empty tables in the front of the restaurant A waiter appeared and showed us to a table at the back of the restaurant right near the kitchen door. When I asked if we could have one of the front tables, he said they were all reserved. He took our coats, brought two menus and left us to choose our meal. But we weren’t happy in that dark out-of-the-way position, and when he came back to take our order, I said that we did not like this table, and please would he bring our coats as we were leaving. Well, lo and behold!, suddenly those tables were not all reserved after all, and he invited us to choose which one of them we would like to sit at. I have since discovered that women on their own are often given second-rate tables in restaurants, but I’ll never let that happen to me again!’
By being assertive and standing up for yourself, you help not only yourself, but all other older women, too. Until a few years ago, most women would choose not to tell anyone they had reached their fortieth birthday; now you see banners across the streets of towns and villages proclaiming messages such as ‘Happy 40th Birthday, Susan’, and suddenly Susan is happy to admit she is 40, and is not ashamed of it.
You, too, can be proud of your age; once everyone around you is also admitting they are 50-something, then that will be seen to be a good age, as will 60-something and 70-something. Feeling ashamed of your age can lead to a low self-esteem, and this is a time of life to do all you can to bolster your self-esteem. Middle-aged women are just as interesting as younger women, and not a lot less interesting than middle-aged men. If you believe you are interesting, other people will share that belief; if you think you are a dull boring old person, you will convey that feeling to everyone you meet If other cultures can find older women wise and interesting and important in society, our culture can, too, and it is up to us to set the ball rolling.
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