I was going to write about Hags by Victoria Smith but I can’t really because I was so terrified by page 29 that I slammed it shut, then cinched it shut it tighter with a belt - like that book with teeth in Harry Potter - and, breathing hard, shoved it to the back of a drawer, applied a padlock, set fire to the house etc.
Hags laid bare for me, even in its opening vista, everything that I am really scared by at the moment: my face - is it changing and sagging or is it in my mind?; my body - is it perimenopause, is it something else?; my position in the world - have I done enough yet? Will I even be allowed to do more?
The paragraph that made fear-vomit rise in my throat was this: “if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to co-exist with the patriarchy in relative peace”. Another was, “each person slowly becomes and old one, and there is no way around this, no means of changing direction or halting the course” - and its asterisked note, “Or, as many have observed, this starts out as a slow transition, then suddenly appears to have happened all at once.”
MASSIVE SCREAM-FACE HELP HELP HELP!!!!
Okay, but, from what I managed to read, (from behind a pillow), this is a brilliant book and if you are less of coward than me definitely get it. It’s a tour de force! Victoria Smith is very knowledgable and very funny and has worked hard to make this an original and very thorough examination of a subject that has been staring us all in the face for a long time. She is that rare thing: an academic whose prose actually makes sense, (although she does occasionally veer into overlong sentences and mind-twisting logic - that’ll be the PhD in German Literature). She is also not into platitudes, which I admire greatly - as neither am I. There is no, “So come on, ladies, embrace that life experience and laughter lines and show the world what you’ve got!!” daytime TV bullshit that sets my shoulders about my ears.
One upside in the book I found was this, “To be a middle-aged woman is not to live in a state of total misery.” Phew. Because I have to say, I really was planning on having a good time. I was aiming for a late-bloomer thing of Maggie Smith, (though she’s more of a constant bloomer than late bloomer), or Jean Rhys or those scientists that made the Covid vaccine, or Iris Apfel. Penny Mordaunt! Fran Leibowitz!
Which leads me to this question: is it okay as a middle aged woman/hag just to block your ears and go “La la la I’m not listening”? Just pretend that this is not going to happen to you, whatever stage of hag-dom you currently inhabit? The reality of ageing has helped me shoulder off the time-wasting of my youth and really value every single day of my dwindling oestrogen stocks.
Whereas once nothing about me was right: not the hair nor the skin nor the turn of the ankle or anything, now I find myself admiring the strength of my teeth, the whiteness of my pupils, I am dazzled at how I managed to escape the children train wreck with no stretch marks. An older male journalist once told me, when I was 25, that I would have to cut all my hair off when I turned 40. I don’t know why he said that to me, I think he’d just read The Game and was negging me, but I thought he was talking crap then and I still think he’s talking crap*. It’s not coming off.
“We’re told we’re ugly,” says Smith, “and that our looks betray our inner badness, yet we don’t feel as unattractive as our younger counterparts believe themselves to be.” Amen!
There is more in this book, about our politics and working lives and pay gaps and not just looks but I was just so blown away by the first 30 pages I couldn’t read on. Report back if you do.
On a completely separate note, if you want to distract yourself from your impending hag-dom, my husband bought me for my birthday (still only 28!) this Phlur “discovery set” from Selfridges. I bloody love a discovery set as I am a terribly disloyal when it comes to fragrance. Phlur is a new and very fashionable brand: their “Missing Person” enjoys a sort of cult status that Escentric Molecules 01 did before it was everywhere. I tipped all these little Phlur sample sizes into a bowl and every morning dip my hand in and spritz on whichever one I pull out.
Then I go out into the garden and finish construction on a giant gingerbread house and do some cackling.
How about you? Where are you in your transformation to hag? 3%? 25%? or do you plan never to get there. Please share your hag thoughts with your fellow hags in the handy box below.
*I just want to point out that this is not representative behaviour of the older male journalists in my life.
I’ll be 68 in December. You think and feel differently as you age. Looking after my health is number one, as I want to continue living independently. I have a full and happy life, do pretty much what I want, have fun and love clothes. I feel more ‘myself’ than at any other time in my life. That may change in my 70s, who knows. Meanwhile I’ll take what I have now. And I’m not afraid or ashamed to be a crone. I just don’t care!
Esther - I am 61 now so have experienced looking in the mirror and noticing lines that seem to appear overnight. I am lucky enough to have kept my shape at size 8-10 and also managed to escape child rearing with no stretch marks! However- one of my best friends died a few years back from breast cancer and every time I wish I looked younger, firmer and all of those things that go with youthfulness I do feel grateful that I have actually got to this age and have the marks of such - the alternative is much less good. There are also many examples of beauty treatments that result in anything but…..