You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. Hello there, I'm Holly Wainwright, and I am mid midlife, mid family, mid holiday meltdown. I just wanted to jump in front of the mic here between seasons of the show we make here for you, just to reflect a little bit on the year that we've had. It feels in some ways like twenty twenty four was the year of mid I don't mean the year of
this show. I'm not that deluded, although of course we launched in May, so I'll take it. What I mean is that it felt like the year that somehow the culture that uppercase thing decided that women over forty were,
you know, a thing. In a serious way. Activists and advocates like Grace Lamb, who we had on the show, and many many more were agitating for a better understanding, more social and medical support for women going through the very many indignities pain, angst, and downright debilitating side effects of perry and menopause, and in a much less essential but very significant way, because people made art about us, lots of it, we were represented in movies by people
who looked slightly like us, if through a soft haze. Anne Hathaway's character seducing a facsimile of Harry's styles in the Idea of You, Nicole Kidman mortifying her daughter by having afternoon sex with Zac Efron in a family affair. They're characters you understand, not them, Not Nicole and Zach. There was also a Big book. Many called it the first great Perry menopausal novel, which, when you consider the amount of dead trees dedicated to the male midlife crisis,
is kind of overdue. I'm talking about All Fours by Miranda July. It's brilliant, it's unpredictable, it's a little dark and definitely wild, not unlike you know us. It's certainly spawn a thousand copycats. And then there was a horror film called The Substance that Demi Moore is going to win awards for. If you haven't the stomach for it, let me tell you. It's not a feel good flick.
It's an exploration of the idea that looking older, wrinkles, sagging skin, the deepening of shadows is literally the most terrifying thing that can happen to a woman. Demi Moore, a woman who knows a thing or two about both being entirely judged by your appearance and about trying to fight the appearance of aging by any means necessary. Represents all of us who have ever leaned into a mirror and gone, who the fuck is that? And why does
she look so tired? Moore's character loses her job because her job was to look young and lineless and fuckable, and so she goes to extreme bloody lengths to literally rebirth herself as a twenty two year old. It's a lot.
I've spent a lot of the year talking and listening to midlife women, and although they're changing faces and morphing bodies, are messing with their self perception, confronting all of us with the most visible signal that a clock is running down, it's actually not the most terrifying thing that they can imagine happening to them. That is more the big stuff loss, illness, irrelevance, abandonment.
It's popular on the Internet to see memes and videos where midlife women have to choose from a fistful of inevitabilities, something like get divorced, give up gluten, start a sleep regimen, make menopause your whole personality, take up gardening. And yes it's reductive, because getting divorced is only almost as life altering is giving up bread. But gardening really is the divisive issue of this age, and someone needs to admit it.
The thing is mids. It feels sometimes like this window of time, And I don't like to put numbers on it, because I'd argue that mid is more of a state of mind. But let's say it's forty ish to sixty ish, thirty five ish to sixty five ish. It's a window
where a lot of big things happen. And if you're here at the end of the year, still standing despite maybe going through some of what we've talked about on the show, divorce, bereavement, your body rebelling on you, finding yourself suddenly invisible, worrying about what the heck you're going to live on as prices increase and opportunities decrease, children growing up in a way, letting go of the idea
of having kids at all. Then you're doing better than that fictional version of Demi shivering on the cold, hard tile of a bathroom floor, selling her soul to put her nipples back in the same spot they once were. Something interesting's going to happen to us Mids as we become more visible and audible and recognized as that most powerful of things, an economically powerful group, a desirable market.
We're going to see ourselves in our lives, what matters to us, what doesn't reflected back to us in all kinds of ways. We're going to be sold solutions to our issues, from sleepless nights to itchy ears and wrinkly brows. And some of those solutions will work and soothe and enrich us, and so won't, and they'll infuriate us because
we're in our trimey era. But while the world clamors around the Mids with its promises to keep us young, it feels to me like it's also been the year to lean into understanding that young isn't the only good thing to be, and that being Mid, with our cracked hearts and our wicked stories of adventures past and big, and our clear eyed plans for what's still ahead, is actually a very powerful place to be. It's just that as the clamor pushes in, we need to make sure
we can hear the answer when we ask ourselves. But what do we want from Act two, from the next part from the Harvest, as some call it, the time when the fruits of all our labors are ready to enjoy. What do we want twenty two year old boobs like in Demi's horror movie. Well, absolutely, but more than that, we want choices. We want adventures. We want clothes that fit and delicious, nourishing food and exciting sex and deep belly laughs with all kinds of friends. We want our
people all around us, whatever that looks like. We want work that sustains us, and art that provokes us and conversations that matter. And we want to know that whatever's next, it's going to be a fucking ride. Here's to twenty twenty five mids. I can't wait to be back in your ears as summer ends and everything begins again.