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Welcome back to Prime Time. Today I'm talking about something other people seem to care about, sometimes more than the people going through it. Aging and the physical effects, and in particular going grey for women. Joining me to talk about graying is Katherine Greer. Katherine is an Australian Canadian author and copywriter, baker and mother. She's just written her first novel, The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe. And over the last
few years, she's gone grey all by choice. Katherine, welcome to Prime Time.
Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
I am really excited. You've written a story in the Sydney Morning Herald this week, along with the launch of your book, and it dives into the topic of going grey, which I think is really interesting for all of our listeners or, you know, so many of us in our 40s and 50s are taking that journey. And you talk about your choice to ditch the dye. I'd love you to take us on the journey. What motivated you?
Yeah. So I was quite young.
When I made the decision and it was pre-COVID. So that was interesting. When you think about it, I just got to this point where I had started to dye my hair when I was 28 years old, because I needed to. It wasn't because I wanted to. I was seriously going gray at 28. And yeah, and so I was dying every eight weeks, and then every six weeks and then every four weeks. And by the time I was in my mid to late 40s, it was starting to look like I'd have to dye my hair every
two weeks to get rid of completely silver roots. And I was on a vacation down at Hyams Beach, which is a location in the inspiration for my new book and chatting with my family. And I was so irritated by the wind whipping around that I scraped all my hair back into a ponytail. And my teenage son. You have a son. So you know what.
This.
Is like. He ran up to me and he said, wait a second. Is is that your real hair color? I actually think it's kind of pretty. It's silver. And in that moment, I just thought, I am so tired of the time and the futile exercise of fighting this. What would it look like if I just sought authenticity from the outside in and let my gray roots uncover themselves? Like, how bad could it look? You know, I was. I
was feeling very. I'd say I'm live in Sydney. I was feeling very mosman blonde in the sense that, you know, I had the blonde bob and I was a school mom and I was an older school mom. I had my second child when I was 37, and I felt like I didn't want to age myself, you know, and, and I think really, bec the truth is, I do look older than my peers who don't color their hair. It's absolutely true. I know everybody wants the good news story. Like I ditched the dye and I look so young.
I don't think I do look young, but there's also something that looks good about your natural hair color coming through because it is natural, you know. And so it matches with your skin tone. The whole thing was very freeing for me, but I did it slowly with badger roots.
I want to hear about that because I, you know, I think that the process and the, you know, I don't have much gray actually blessed right now. I'm actually going browner because I've I've bleached my hair all my life, and I've just hit that point where I think it looks a little bit weird and a little bit kind of canned, and I've sort of gone, actually, it's in
fashion right now to go a bit browner. So I'm gonna lean into the fashion and maybe this normal route, they call it a route, drag their dyeing into my hair. but it's actually my natural color coming.
The the question back is what if it's beautiful? Yeah, it's scary.
To go darker.
Yeah, but what if your natural color is actually beautiful and you've just been hoodwinked all this time by the massive marketing machine that says women need to spend thousands of dollars a year and hours in the salon chair just trying to keep on top of something that's going to happen anyway. So my decision was really like, right, I'm 49, I'm just going to get my aging over with.
I'm just going to get it over with. And then I will roll on into those years as myself, and no one's going to be startled by me, you know, being 70 and black haired one day and then, you know, the next day deciding to go gray. So so that's what I did. And honestly, I would recommend doing it a bit younger. For the benefit of doing it younger, is that your face is still quite young when you're in your 40s, you know. Instead of doing the transition at 70 or 80, when you are your age everywhere,
and then you slowly reveal your hair. But look, it's 100% a woman's choice. Not like I'm trying to tell anybody what to do.
People want to know what it feels like and what the process feels like, because so many of us dye our hair. I mean, I started dying at 14, right? And yeah, and I don't think there has been a period of my life where I haven't had hair dye in my hair.
Um, no.
I wouldn't know my natural color, to be honest. It's it's an illusion.
And when you let your roots grow out just a bit like, here's my advice, right? Give yourself 3 or 4 weeks and then just pull all your hair back and and look at yourself in the mirror and see what it looks like. You might actually be really surprised at how pretty the brown is instead of all of the The other lovely thing about ditching the die is that your hair feels so good. It feels like it
felt when you were a little girl. Do you remember all those silky braids and plats and ponytails and just the silky?
Remember my.
Daughters.
Before they started bleaching? Yeah. And, you know, even they've joined the the the festival at 14, 15, you know, they, they can't resist doing what everybody does. And it is this interesting thing where breeding into our families and, and but it's interesting because going silver in our 50s, even our 40s is becoming a bit more cool.
It is. And it's surprising for me. So you're a woman with crowning glory hair? I don't know, some people are listening to this. Some people are watching it. I'm a woman with okay hair. Hair has never been my crowning glory. But when I went gray or silver, my natural color came out. It was shocking to me how many people now routinely stop me to tell me they love my hair.
I do love your hair. It's beautiful. Right?
Thank you. It's actually pretty average. But if you saw me with a dyed blonde bob, you'd probably think it's not the greatest hair. But, um. I think the natural color actually looks quite pretty, right? It suits my skin tone and. And also, I have this feeling in in midlife. This is really important to me as a midlife woman to start to center our concerns. I wrote a bit in the Sydney Morning article about invisibility and how surprised I was by women's collective fear when I told them, Nana,
I'm actually letting my hair go grey. They were afraid for me. And the reason they were afraid for me is that they thought I would age myself, which I have. And then they thought that aging myself would damage me somehow. And that's when you really think about the fact that that pressure is put on women. Like what? When we're in the middle of our lives, we're actually more intelligent, we are more aware. We're more responsible. We we have bigger, juicier,
more interesting lives. And yet the the narrative in society is that we're somehow damaging ourselves by being older, that that self-directed.
Ageism, right? That that is that is you saying to yourself, I'm afraid of getting older because I'm afraid of the judgment people are going to cast on me and or I'm afraid of how I'm going to be when I'm older. And you judging yourself that you'll be an inferior person as you get older, and therefore you can't do all the things that you used to be able to do, and I think the world is changing.
It is you do different things now. So when I look at life expectancy, you know, if you think about drawing a line and you put 50 right in the middle, that's in the middle, because we're living my mother's 93 and going strong, you know, so it's likely that I'll live into my 100. So I'm just in the middle of my life. And this is why whether it's, you know, you want to write your book or you want to start your own podcast, or you want to build a business like the character in my new novel. Does you
really think that at 50 you're in the middle? You know you are. You are fully primed. You have all of this knowledge and awareness and ability to do something with your life. Why not do it? You know, and and it's so important for women to be centered in the middle of their lives, not just seen to be finished, because we no longer have youthful power.
It's interesting you say that because I don't even see women seeing this as the middle of their lives. We have been preconditioned to think that we're going to die at 70, and that we have to have finished all the good bits by now. But but we haven't. Have we?
Um, not at all. Not anymore. When you look at health and longevity and all of the science behind this, I've seen your podcast. You do amazing things, you speak to amazing people. There's a lot of, um, longevity hints and tips now. And we just are living longer like people. We need to keep our teeth and our hips and our everything else for longer. Now we need.
And the doctors just out from December that that says that. I think a 50 year old today has a 1 in 4 chance of making it to 97. I might have this slightly off, but 97 for a man, 98 for a woman. Uh, or maybe not. Yeah, but but and then couples longer. I mean, it's phenomenal. The numbers. I might have those a little bit off, but the, the data on what our chances are at a 1 in 4 basis, if we're wealthier than average or healthier
than average, will outlive these medians. And and that's boggling for me.
It was partially why I chose to write about a midlife character, um, in the Bittersweet Bakery Cafe, because I was really tired of reading about 30 year olds. I've been 30, you've been 30. I've got the guy. I've had the babies. I don't want to keep reading about that for the rest of my life, you know? And that's why, for women's creativity in the middle of their lives, like you write about retirement and you, you write about
important things that impact us now. If all we could ever focus on was our experience in our 20s and 30s, you know, we we knew so little compared to what we know now and we're so much more interesting. I mean, we are in this generation. We are the glue. We are sandwiched between teenagers. Often aging parents were still working and were in the highest pressure point of our careers
because we're actually advanced in our careers. So we are just a pressure cooker and then you add menopause into that mix.
It's a beautiful celebration of life, isn't it?
One more thing. And still and still, Beck. This is what women do, right? We're in the middle of our lives. We have a backpack full of rocks that we're carrying. We see another woman, we sling that backpack over our shoulder, and we look at her and we say, how can I help you? Like, what can I do for you? What do you need, my friend? And that's why we're the glue for everything. Because we just. We know how to operate. We. We make this world go round. You know,
we're not all. Thank goodness. And peace be to the women who are 20 and 30. Look, I was a very careless and frivolous young woman. Like we all can be, right? And yet now I think I'm holding a lot together. And it's the iceberg. We sit here, I look into your eyes, you look into mine. And we see this tiny little tip. You see my beautiful painting behind me in my home in Sydney. But you don't know the seven eights that are under. That's under the water lurking
that I'm carrying. And I don't know what you're carrying, and we don't know what the readers or listeners are carrying, but we do know that we're here to provide some encouragement for each other. And midlife women know how to do that.
It's beautiful the way you're thinking about it, and you've taken that on a bit of a journey. It hasn't just been your hair, has it? It's been it's been a midlife journey for you of discovering some of your passions. Tell us about it.
Yeah. So basically, I always wanted to write books, but I wasn't sure I was capable. And so I just told myself stories inside my own head, and I didn't even realize I was doing it. I was a copywriter at work. So I told you earlier, Bonnie Garmus lessons in chemistry. She's also a copywriter. So I'm really good at writing and getting to the point in my full time work. And I just decided one day and it really coincided with going gray. I just thought, if not now, when?
There is not a person in the world who's going to come and knock on my door and say, Katherine, you deserve a book deal. How about I hold your hand while you sit down and write one, and we'll see how this goes. And it looks like with Bittersweet Bakery Cafe and with everything else, it looks like all roses and success. But you know, it's here. Yeah, I've got one too. It's been a huge journey to get here. And there's, you know, pitfalls and learning. And it's not linear.
It's hard to find your readers one by one, the women who resonate with you and your message. Um, but having said that, I'd just say to everybody, start it. Whatever that dream is in your heart, you know, no one is going to come and open the door for you. You have to kick that door down yourself. Sometimes, you know, you have to push it open by whatever means and just start working.
So talk to me about that, because I think people need to see perspective on how you've pushed the door. Open yourself. You know, often we think, oh, we've got to leave something to open another door. But you haven't done that, have you? You've you've been on your own journey balancing or juggling, maybe. And I'd love to hear that story, because I think it makes it a bit more real. If we recognize that we have to be keeping a few balls in the air as we pursue our dream.
We do. And I think part of it is everybody says, oh, you know, it's being organized and focused. And miracle mornings, I think there's a bunch of different ways you can do it. If you want to start a new project, you can try the boot camp approach, which is I'm going to take the first weekend of this month, and for Saturday and Sunday, I am going to really focus on this project, whether it's starting my business or starting a book or whatever it is. I'm going to take
two days. I'm going to go hardcore. I was going to say pizza and beer, you know, and late nights, but whatever.
Not that generation. We don't need to do it like that. No.
Whatever floats your boat.
But maybe you want a boot camp it. And if you're going to write a book, for example, it can be as simple as I love to show people this because I forget it all the time. Oh, do I not have them in my desk drawer? I'm looking for sticky notes.
Oh yeah.
So in my pile of sticky notes here.
I love it. Okay, girlfriend, if you want to write a book, really.
The thing that you need for the book is the title. Now, often a publisher will change that title, but a good title really encapsulates the heartbeat of your book. And you can write that on a sticky note and stick it on your desk or on your fridge, and you can write a sticky note chapter heading for every chapter you think you might want to write, and the benefit of
organizing your ideas and organizing your thoughts. This way, whether it's a book or a project or a business, is you can get up above it somehow and then visually see what you've got in front of you and start to move things around a little bit. And you're not wasting all this time doing fancy stuff in Canva or business plans, or trying to figure it out. You know, you just got to get a move on execution.
I teach it to female founders all the time who are in university learning how to grow startups, and it's something I do to give back now. And the the process of helping women founders get from A to B when they're juggling kids at home and obligations and running the house and doing all that while they're trying to live their dream at any age is teaching them how
to get to the first execution. Because in fact, if you never talk to a customer, you never understand whether the market needs what you've outlined because you've never outlined it. You can't then adapt it, right?
Yeah.
So for me, it was a double whammy really thinking about I want to I want to write books. Let's just see how I go. So I did all the usual channels. There's so much help online. But also what I really wanted to do more than that was center
the midlife experience. So in the Bittersweet Bakery Cafe, what I really focused on was the story of a woman in the middle of her life, and what would happen if everything was taken away from her, everything that she relied on, what would she build with what's in her own two hands? And I love that idea. You know, if you wiped out your home, your podcast, your publishing career, everything you've built back, why would you do to start over? And then I threw her in because I'm a Canadian
and I truly have. I'm also an Australian now, and I have a love of this country that is so deep. I put her in a little Australian village with all of these crazy Australian characters who I loved, diverse and interesting, and just let that book go in the Bittersweet Bakery Cafe to sort of see what would happen. Um, and, and I love the story. I don't think we all need to be writing about 20 and 30 year olds.
I think there is a place for midlife women to read about themselves, read books about themselves, where we're not the crazy secondary character with purple hair and pink glasses, because I'm not like that. And and I'm never going to be like that. I'm just myself. But more in midlife and we're not some cartoon or caricature of ourselves either.
I think that's actually a really interesting conversation, because I know a lot of women who've taken on a more eccentric look as they've got older, maybe, and particularly in the media industry, you see a lot of it. And I guess I don't have the whole big jewels, big glasses, you know, I try to do bright colors.
But aesthetic.
It's a, it's a it doesn't work on me as much as I look at it and go, wow, you can pull that off. Um.
Yeah.
But I, I wonder if it's somewhere less invisible. Do you feel that that's those people are, are trying to to to find something that they are have lost.
Maybe claim some space in the world. But I would say that our authenticity should really shine through and that we shouldn't have to. We can, but we shouldn't have to jump up and down and shout, right? We should just be in a society where there is space for us and where we are seeing because of what we contribute, not necessarily because we look like, you know, Nicole Kidman and I are the same age. And when I look at Nicole, she probably looks like my the girlfriends of
my sons, my young adult sons. You know, she's beautiful and she's lovely. She makes a living from her body and her face and her acting. And I don't I make a living from my my head, my words.
Yeah, I'm the same.
My hands and my words.
Yeah, yeah it is. It's from how we can and help people and and help them enjoy their time too.
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say to anybody wondering, do I have to are my only two options complete invisibility or becoming really out there with my sense of style? I think no, I think can we age as ourselves and just be more of ourselves? I use this image in the opening of the Bittersweet Bakery Cafe, and it's the image of a matryoshka doll. A Russian doll. And I argue personally to everyone I know that we don't peel layers back like an onion to get to the
center of ourselves. As we age, we actually add layers on and become more of who we were. So you know that that's what we want. We want to grow. And it's okay to age. Yeah. It's okay to get.
A beautiful metaphor. And and for me, in the middle of my life, I'm 49. You know, I look into the future, and I think every thing that I've done now and maybe two years ago, I stepped away from almost everything that I did as a purpose in life and, and did rebuild. So it's interesting to to contemplate the journey of that. And to have the choice to be authentic is an amazing thing. And I'm not sure a lot of women feel like they have the choice to
be authentic. And, you know, I'm blessed that hopefully people listen because I am so honest. Um, yeah. But but it. And I can't help but be honest. That's just who I am. But you know, when you're in a commercial role or you're you're expected to be something, it's sometimes very hard to be authentic, isn't it?
It can be. And I love the fact that we act as stepping stones for each other. So you're reaching back to a bunch of younger women in university and whatever and helping them. And you're reaching forward to me, and I'm ten years ahead of you so you can look at me and think, ah, that's what Katherine's doing in ten years. Maybe. Maybe that's what I'll be doing in ten years time. You know, she's still working full time for a major corporation and doing a lot of
great work in the world. She's still writing her books. She's got her family that she's loving. And, um, yeah, I run an age positive lifestyle site. Like, I have a Sunday newsletter at our age, and I write to people every week. I'm not selling anything. I'm not on Substack or any of that, but I just love to put some good out into the world, you know, and encourage all of us women who are acting as glue to say, hey, you can make it through and keep going. You know, that's really my message.
With me is Katherine Greer, author and age positive advocate. She's just released her first novel, The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe. So we talked about the hair. We talked about the book. What else has been in your journey of this sort of midlife transition? It sounds like you've been on quite a self-discovery journey.
Yeah, absolutely. So really, I think what it was for me is deciding what I wanted to do with the time that I have left on the planet. You know, what do I want to leave as a legacy? Part of that for me is really family. I absolutely value and love my family and this sounds so small. I love Sunday dinner. We don't eat together for most of the week. Everybody's got crazy schedules and whatever else. But
I do love, you know, just that warmth. And for me, food and baking and family dinners and all of that. That's love, right? In my world, it's not that way for everybody. But I really like to explore how to have hospitality for one another, how to open up our doors and welcome people into our homes. You know? And the fact is, nobody expects perfection. Nobody wants perfection.
In my next book, which. Yeah, which isn't out yet. Um, I talk about creating new rhythms with your kids as they get older and starting to, and mine are just at the point I've got a 20, nearly 22, nearly 20, nearly 17. Um, and you start to see the need to have rhythms that bring them back, right? That they, they can, um, kind of become rhythmic in because otherwise they do just go off and, and float and come back when they need something.
Yeah.
Sounds cheeky of me, but I'm a little selfish that I love hanging out with them. So do you have any rhythms?
Yeah, well, it would be the same.
So our our kids are essentially the same age, which is really lovely. And you know what that's like. So we always have been the open door house where everybody's welcome. And I really do like to focus on Sunday dinner, just because I feel like it's that one touch point during the week where we can kick back and relax. I always bake a delicious dessert. Um, one of the. That's one of the things I did in the book. I added my family recipes, so they're in there, 25
of them. So good. I'm a good baker. I was a baker from the time I was a little girl in Canada, growing up on the farm with five older brothers and sisters. I learned to bake when I was about eight years old. Um, and I just think those rhythms of home and heart and whether you're with a family or you've got friends in your lives or it's
found family. And again, when I wrote the book, I realized a lot of midlife women don't have families anymore, or something could have happened either with, you know, marital issues or kids being away in other countries or.
Whatever.
Living in Canada right now, or she'll be home in May. But, you know, I'm counting down. It's been it's been a year without a rhythm.
It's hard. And we find family where we are.
I think we've found family. I think that's a concept we might stretch out here. I think we we do have to build the connections around us. If our family is not local.
We do. And for us, it was always being immigrants to Australia and so appreciating being welcomed here by this beautiful country and honestly being a bit afraid about Canada. Now, I'm saying that quite sincerely, it's not great there with what's happening in the world. Um, I feel like we have had to build this sort of wider, broader family out of found family, and that's the best way to do it. I think we need each other in general. We all need each other.
I love that sentiment that that we can. And I think it's something a lot of people write to me about. They they read the book and it does talk a lot about family. Both my books do, and the reality for people who have fractured families and kids overseas and, and that is that they do have to find family around them. And I think that's beautiful. So what other rhythms have you created in your life since you've been through this adaptive stage?
I think I've recognized, like.
We all have, how important our health journey is, and that that doesn't need to look like hours at the gym or whatever, but it needs to be, um, practical in terms of doable steps that we can all do just to make sure that we're, you know, sleeping as much as we can. That's such a big one for women, isn't it? Um, just being able to sleep is so important, and it's a tough thing to do. So that's been great as well. And I live a creative life wherever I can. I like to write a lot. I love
my girlfriends. I'm one of four sisters. So to me, not having my sisters here means I really do rely on girlfriends and spend a lot of time with them. And then, of course, by the time you finish a full time job and a bit of a writing career and family and all of those things, it's very it's full life and it's big days and yeah, so let's.
Take a full circle back to the grey hair, because I know people will still be fascinated and they'll want to hear the rest of the story because because I think it it it's a beautiful article that you wrote, and I will link it into the show notes for people as well as your book. Um, talk to me about how long it took.
Oh, my hair is so slow growing. So you guys are.
Probably know mine is very slow. It doesn't do anything nice except get fuzzy and like straw. So you know it's not. Yeah, well.
You know, that would change if you stopped coloring, so.
Yeah. That's why I'm going down. The journey is I feel like the the menopausal hair loss at the front is real. Yeah. From bleaching. So.
I know. It's so funny. So it took me. You can see my hair length. It's like a chin length bob. It took me 18 months to grow out my hair and I decided to do it. Like I said laughingly at the start of the show with Badger Roots. And that is what I did. I wanted to allow my authenticity to come out slowly. I wanted to get used to myself as this unfolded. Now there's so many.
The brownie yellow at the bottom and the the white at the top.
I did, yeah, I did.
I've seen.
It around.
I know, and I just kept going. I think till you get to a certain point, if you kind of like brush it back and tuck your hair behind your ears and you do that sort of thing, you know, you can't see. It's it's easier because then you start to get a lot of silver at the front, and whatever's going on back there, you don't see it quite as much. But I did that. And then one quite short haircut near the end. And then then I was finished. So it took time, but I needed the time to
get used to myself looking this way. The compliments really helped though, and you might find this too. You'll be surprised. I think people can kind of intuit what looks natural. Really looks beautiful, you know? It's like looking at a a leaf on a rose from Ikea, from all of the false flowers, versus looking at a leaf on a rose outside in your garden. You know, the the garden rose. There's something is just beautiful because it's natural. You really do get an inherent beauty in that. And I'm not
saying that women with colored hair aren't beautiful. Of course they are. And yes, they do definitely, definitely do look younger than I do. But there's a beauty in the naturalness, so I'd be keen to see what your brown hair looks like.
Maybe after last.
Night. Maybe. It's beautiful.
You have to laugh. I texted my hairdresser with a couple of pictures because I've been getting the same bleached foils for. I don't know how long. Um, and I texted her a photograph and I said, can you can we do this next time? And she texted me back, nope. I'm sorry. I can't do darker on you. If you want to do that, you've got to go to another salon and get it done and come back to me when you want to be blonde again, because I saw
so many people come once. Get it brown. I desperately unhappy with it and then don't want to be brown after a couple of weeks who've been perpetually blonde all their lives. And and so I did. I went off to another hairdresser and she texted me a few weeks later. Did you go to get Brown? I think she thought she would scare me out of it. And, um, because I've been going to her for 20 years. And I texted her back a photograph and she said, oh, it's not that brown. Um, but to me, this is my natural.
It's close. Closing in on my natural color. It's probably not natural yet, but at least I can see line two. It's not just being solid bleach and damage and and that's that's sort of where I figure I'll go over the journey, but I don't know. They keep telling me there's not a lot of gray.
That's interesting too, because I felt like when my hair was blonde, it felt when it was wet. Kind of like soft candy floss.
Fairy floss. Is that what you call it here?
Yeah. Just really damaged. And now it doesn't. Now it literally feels like it felt when I was eight.
It's just gray hair.
Silky or thick or coarse.
It's yours.
It's a it's a bit thicker, maybe, or. But I wouldn't know. I definitely don't have coarse hair. I'm sure some people do, but those are the women. You see them with gray hair on Instagram. They look fabulous. Oh my gosh.
They're they're.
Gorgeous.
They're just.
Gorgeous.
And you've done a bit of modeling with it as well.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that ended up happening really because I went gray early and that was interesting. So when I was doing that work in the world, I kind of fell into it. And when I would show up for shoots, I was the granny of a of a child, like a 7 or 8 year old child, which was fine, like in real life I could have been. But the mother cast of that child was invariably like 40 years old, but looked about 30 because, you know, colored her hair or whatever else. So I was arriving. I was would be
ten years older than these women. I would be cast as their mother, the granny. And they were.
They.
Were like the young mom. Yeah. And I kept talking to them, thinking it felt so well, it would be like you and me exactly right, being on a shoot together. And you'd be the mom of the seven year old, and I'd be your mother nine years older than you are.
And yet we feel like peers. Absolutely. And it made.
Me think, you know, and the industry, that industry. And industry. And that's another thing. When I wrote the Bittersweet Bakery Cafe, it it opens with this scene of the main characters, an advertising exec in Sydney. And I really used some of my experiences there around classic models and whatever else. I think it's super interesting to see the way that society wants to ignore midlife women. But now there's this whole resurgence of people like Andie MacDowell who say, I
don't want to be young. I've been young, I'm actually old, and I like it. And we used to think in advertising, too. It's so interesting. We think of featuring older women as like Helen Mirren. Well, Helen Mirren is in her 80s and Jennifer Lopez's My Age, and she looks 25 and she pole dances at the Super Bowl. So where are the women who are really like me? And that's that's why I wrote about a midlife character in my book, because I thought, where are we? Why are we having
to disappear? Or why are we having to be 30? Look as if we're 30. Do things to our faces and whatever to to appear to be 30 when we're not.
Well, it used to be the.
40 year old woman who had to then act young to get a job, to get an opportunity to. But but I think very much now we are seeing the 50 and 60 year old woman possibly even steal the limelight from younger stars. And it's beautiful to see because in in my early days in media, we used to hear, oh, once you're 40, 45, you won't get a gig. And and now you're seeing, um, older models on the runways,
older models featuring in the campaign ads for the major retailers. Um, it is like the retailers have woken up and, and recognized that their, their shopper is.
Because.
We have so much purchasing power. Like you'd know this from all your work in the finance world, right? We have we spend something midlife women spend something like $70 trillion a year on this planet. We're the shoppers. We're the ones who have the money to spend, too, because we're later in our lives. And so it's time that retailers really woke up and saw that that was the case. And that aspirational advertising doesn't have to mean that everybody
looks 30. You know what? What does aspirational 50 look like? What does aspirational 60 or 70 look like? Looks vibrant. Loved. Healthy. You know that's what it looks like.
Yeah, I love it I. You certainly are enthusiastically, uh, in the right place for me. It fits for me and for me. I think we've got to represent 50 and well, for me, 47 up has been the period where I think we lose our way as a society. We don't represent the needs of people in that age group. We don't talk about the issues of people in that age group all the way up into retirement. I find
the The invisibility of these issues. When we when I do things for the newspaper, often I'll talk about issues for the retired generation, and younger journalists aren't even registering that these are issues, you know, and and so I sort of find this gap in this space where lots of smart people know the gaps there, but they aren't in.
The.
Field where they might fill the space. So, um, it's it's possibly a cost structure problem in the media. People leave the media because they don't pay much. Um, you know, things like that become real. And so you've got to be be able to sustain yourself if you are working or you go the corporate side, I guess.
So why why.
Do you think that people aren't interested, since there are so many of us and there's such a need for education and exploration around these life stages? Like why is it not there? Why is it not being provided?
Well, I.
Suspect it's just unsexy, right? There's there's other appealing areas. And when you have a limited pool of activity that you've got to do. I mean, the reality of the advertising dollar in this segment is that it will always push younger, um, simply. And advertising is a shrinking market. So it's a tough model to be in media, but to be able to understand this market and serve it with products and services is a is a beautiful thing.
I've been working for older Australians for what, 15 years in my career with my previous businesses starts at 60 and then stepping away from that one and and doing epic from from nothing. And I feel like epic is a a journey I'm on to understand all the problems. And now we move into prime time and we talk about 50 year olds and 47 to 65, the period before we end up at the end of our employment. Because I don't even think there's a specific line that
we're going to end up crossing into retirement anymore. It's not a it's not a finish line anymore.
It's a very has been.
Right.
You know, we.
Want to keep being purposeful in the next phase of our lives. And that might have us keep working by choice.
And why not? When you think about it, if you think we need to finance ourselves into our 90s or beyond, we need a lot of like ability to keep working. We do. We need.
The capital.
Brain stimulated.
Yeah. For those who.
That's important too.
Yeah. And we're we're.
So valuable because we know so much. We just have that depth of experience. And I think that, you know, working longer lives is actually a very positive thing. I agree with you. I think it's admirable what you're doing. I also think it makes good business sense, because there are a lot of us in the middle of our lives right now looking for inspiration, looking for next steps, how to and how to make the most of things now. I love that about the work that you're doing. I'm
doing it in novels. You're doing it in. It's a blessing. Books? Yeah.
It's a blessing to combine passion with purpose, isn't it? And and make a living being able to do it. I think that, you know. And so so to wrap up today, I'd love to put this beautiful book up and have you tell us how it came about.
Oh, so really, the Bittersweet Bakery Cafe came about because I was frustrated with all of the books out there featuring 30 year olds, and I.
Thought.
Where are the books for women like us who actually, you know, characterize us and center on us and are about our juicy, huge and interesting lives and struggles and challenges? So that's why I wrote the novel. So it's been
a great journey. I've really loved it. It is so resonating with women, which is great, and I think it's very suitable for that midlife audience who's thinking about reinvention, maybe even feeling a bit flat and wondering what's next To have some inspiration from a woman who just has so much grit and determination and will not give up, will not stop.
Oh, that's so inspiring. I only received my coffee today, so I am going to be spending the weekend with it. Kathryn Greer, thank you so much for joining me on the show.
Thank you for having me back.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Prime Time. I would love to get some more input from you, our listeners, about what questions you have and what you want me to explore on the Prime Time podcast. Please email me at Beck at Prime Timers. Net. And as always, please rate review. And of course, make sure you tap the follow or subscribe button on the Prime Time podcast. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter at Prime Timers. Net.
My name is Beck Wilson. Stay tuned for our next episode and in the meantime, make your prime time count.