Fifty and Fabulous: Why ‘Over the Hill’ is Now Something to Be Celebrated

No longer seen as ‘over the hill’, the midlife mile­stone is now some­thing to cel­e­brate.

Now is the time!” de­clares Joanne Fedler, ‘sto­ry­teller coach’, to her rapt au­di­ence. “Break what­ever has kept you small – find the part of your­self you left be­hind and give it your power as a fully grown woman. Hear your own voice. Meet your­self!”

We have gath­ered at the Eter­nity Play­house in Syd­ney for the in­au­gu­ral Sil­ver Sirens event. Sur­round­ing me is an all-fe­male au­di­ence made up of ev­ery­one from sci­en­tists and ad­min work­ers to small busi­ness own­ers and cre­atives. But they share one thing in com­mon. They are all over 45.

We are here to ex­plore life’s next phase – not as a de­cline to be feared or held at bay as long as pos­si­ble, but as a rite of pas­sage that can nour­ish us and is wor­thy of re­spect – even awe.

We are here to ex­plore life’s next phase – not as a de­cline to be feared or held at bay as long as pos­si­ble, but as a rite of pas­sage that can nour­ish us and is wor­thy of re­spect – even awe.

“I have al­ways looked ahead in life and been ex­cited about grow­ing into my next age,” ex­plains Faith Agugu, the founder of Sil­ver Sirens, who is in her fifties. “I’d think, ‘What will I have learnt and achieved by 40?’ Now it’s, ‘I can’t wait to see what hap­pens at 60!’”

Midlife was first mod­eled to Agugu by her fam­ily. “My mother came into her own in her fifties. Af­ter sac­ri­fic­ing ev­ery­thing to raise six kids, she could fi­nally put moth­er­ing aside. So Mum learned to read, and took two trips a year. Fifty to me spells ad­ven­tures.”

Agugu’s her­itage also im­bued the age­ing process with a dif­fer­ent cul­tural con­text. She says, “In Africa we re­vere and re­spect older women as el­ders. They are our teach­ers. I was sur­prised when I got to know Western cul­ture and saw how women re­ally strug­gle with a lim­ited, con­stricted view of age.”

In­deed, many women would agree that there’s long been a stigma at­tached to get­ting older – a no­tion that you’re past your prime, even in­vis­i­ble, once you reach a cer­tain age. But things are be­gin­ning to change, and now it’s 50’s time to shine. Rather than see­ing it as some­thing to deny and turn away from, more and more women are em­brac­ing this midlife mile­stone – and all that comes along with it.

In the world of beauty, tra­di­tional signs of age­ing are now be­ing worn with pride. The sil­ver hair trend, for ex­am­ple, cel­e­brates what was once shamed. For decades, the first gleam of grey or sil­ver hair was im­me­di­ately ban­ished by those who weren’t ready to sur­ren­der their younger selves.

In the world of beauty, tra­di­tional signs of age­ing are now be­ing worn with pride. The sil­ver hair trend, for ex­am­ple, cel­e­brates what was once shamed. For decades, the first gleam of grey or sil­ver hair was im­me­di­ately ban­ished by those who weren’t ready to sur­ren­der their younger selves.

But to­day, grey hair is be­ing re-imag­ined by women who are hav­ing loads of fun post­ing their skunk streaks, salt-and-pep­per styles and shim­mer­ing sil­ver ringlets on In­sta­gram. As in­creas­ing num­bers of peo­ple ditch the dye, the mes­sage is loud and clear – ad­vanc­ing age is no longer some­thing you have to hide. Rather, you can be ‘old’ and still be con­fi­dent, em­pow­ered and beau­ti­ful.

In­deed, the founders of Lu­men (a dat­ing app for over-50s) bris­tled at staid ‘se­nior’ style dat­ing plat­forms that just didn’t re­flect the vi­brant, suc­cess­ful, sexy 50-some­things that they knew – who were out there “look­ing for their next ad­ven­ture”. So they de­signed a plat­form that specif­i­cally caters to them in a con­tem­po­rary, hi-tech way, with fea­tures like photo ver­i­fi­ca­tion and min­i­mum length mes­sag­ing (‘Hi, was­sup?’ isn’t go­ing to cut it).

As Gen Xers now en­ter midlife, is it any won­der that we are ea­ger to grow older dif­fer­ently, over­writ­ing the blue­print of what came be­fore? Known as the ‘mid­dle child’ of gen­er­a­tions, stuck be­tween the Baby Boomers and the Mil­len­ni­als, we are said to be the de­fi­ant demographic – in­de­pen­dent thinkers who pre­fer to do things our own way. Per­haps it is only nat­u­ral, there­fore, that we rebel against the ex­pec­ta­tions that once swirled around turn­ing 50. We don’t have to sim­ply fade away into mid­dle age – we can find a bet­ter way for­ward.

Tran­si­tion­ing past one’s prime fertility into their for­ties has been a light­ning rod of ex­is­ten­tial angst for many women. In a pre­vi­ous life, I was a fash­ion model. In that world, the in­evitable as­so­ci­a­tion of age­ing with worth­less­ness was ac­cel­er­ated. It was not only youth but ex­treme youth (pre-25) that was the source of my iden­tity and my value to my com­mu­nity (the fash­ion world). The ap­proach of 40 was con­fronting and scary, while 50 seemed be­yond the pale, mys­te­ri­ous and neb­u­lous.

But it’s time to com­pletely re­think ev­ery­thing we had thought (or feared) about early midlife. As we ap­proach 50, it can be chance for us to take stock of our lives and find a new di­rec­tion. We can em­brace all those ex­pe­ri­ences that pre­vi­ously sat on the back burner due to lack of time. The fo­cus on mar­riage, ba­bies and ca­reer am­bi­tions that so con­sumed our youth can switch to self­hood and our un­der­ly­ing dreams.

At the Sil­ver Sirens event, el­ders in their eight­ies – one had be­come a co­me­dian at 68 – were so ou­tra­geous that the the­atre filled with laugh­ter as their huge per­son­al­i­ties blew the cob­webs away from the ‘women of a cer­tain age’ in­vis­i­bil­ity of yore. The les­son was clear – you can­not avoid ageing, but you can have fun with it.

In the tu­mult of this era’s so­cial changes, as more peo­ple start to see 50 not as the be­gin­ning of the end, but as a new start, it is ageism it­self that’s start­ing to look old hat.