Is 36 too Young to be a Desperate Cougar?
My mid-life crisis crisis started with a jacket. A gorgeous, soft-skinned leather biker jacket. I was at the mall buying my kids school shoes and there was the jacket, in a shop full of teenage girls in vulva-skimming jean shorts and flat-stomach-bearing crop tops. And there was me, the nearly 40 year old harassed mum that saw that leather jacket, which represented so much more than just a durable arm-warmer, and I HAD to have it. And because I don’t have to work six weeks in a shitty Saturday job to afford it, I bought it. Just like that. A black leather biker jacket complete with zips, and studs and all that jazz.
And when I got home with the groceries, and two whining snotty kids, and a load of housework and client emails awaiting me, I proudly showed off my sexy new purchase to my husband. And he laughed. He actually rolled his eyes, shook his shoulders with every mounting chuckle and mouthed ‘mid life crisis’ before walking away. Cheeky bugger!
And it got worse. Because I am seriously considering getting a tattoo. Sorry Miss Pollyanna, I WILL be expecting you to love my new body art when it’s done. I’m that serious about getting a tattoo that I went on to draw my design idea with biro on to the inside of my wrist (a respectable place, no? Hardly on my chest or an entire arm sleeve for fuck’s sake) and again hubby pursed his lips, sighed and walked out of the room. And the kids ran in, demanding I drew on their arms too.
In fact there is a whopping huge array of alarm-bell-ringing, bright-flashing-neon-arrow like clues that I am hurtling shamelessly into a midlife crisis of embarrassing proportions. Wanna see my list?
1. I have joined the gym because I am convinced that if J-Lo, who is seven years older than me, can look like that… then I can too. In three months. Without her money or entourage or Photoshop.
2. I am on a diet. A different one each week. One involves sea water and another limits my eating hours to just eight. Completely sensible diets. No, none of them have worked, so I will be following the Think Yourself Thin diet Miss Pollyanna told me about instead.
3. Everyone is younger than me. Policemen, doctors, lawyers… it’s scaring the shit out of me.
4. And every woman is thinner and sexier and freer than me.
5. And every man under 30 is hot. Probably because they have stopped looking at me, or because they now call me ‘ma’m’ instead of ‘hot lips’ and I really don’t want them to. I am Cougar… hear me growl.
6. I want to travel again, and escape, and jump on the back of a stranger’s Harley (I have the jacket now, God dammit) and just GO.
7. I look in the mirror and have to blink three times because, how? Because that face isn’t the one that I imagine when I think of me. Or the face that matches the me inside. It’s the face of a woman halfway through her life, who’s kids don’t let her sleep and who didn’t invest in expensive face cream during her 20s because she didn’t fucking need to then. A woman who spends far too much time pulling the sides of her cheeks up muttering ‘if I just had a little lift here, look, look, just here… see… look at the difference’.
8. I need to prove to my kids that I’m not a boring old cow so I join them on the zip wire at the park and show them how to do somersaults on the monkey bars. Even though it hurts and makes me feel a bit sick and reminds me that I need to up my gym limits.
9. I get far too excited about going out with my mates at night, and I drink too much, and I act inappropriately because the inside me thinks she’s still hot and forgets what the outside me looks like.
10. I sway between ‘Oh God I love my thirties; I’m so much more self-assured, confident, well-off and successful than I’ve ever been’ to ‘Oh I’m soooo fucking old! I’m old! I’m nearly 40, which is old! I’m old, old, OLD!’
And it seems I am not alone. According to new research (well, I read it online) women go through a midlife crisis earlier than men. Between the ages of 35-44 apparently… so I guess I’m just normal and hitting the next milestone. I am not alone. But unlike other women who have used this moment in time to re-assess their life and open a school in Rwanda, or adopt Russian orphans, or start a successful on-line business that changes the world – I bought a jacket.
But it’s a really cool jacket. And once I have my tattoo I am going to squeeze my newly-toned arse into some slinky vulva-skimming jean shorts and go find me a hot young biker to match my jacket. One that won’t laugh at my new look and will see the inside me on the outside of me. Because there’s no mid-life crisis crisis going on here, ladies. Nopety nope. I’m just being a normal 36 year old. Apparently.
