Introducing: The alternative Oscars for midlife women

Recognizing that things changing (for the better) on film and television

Photo by Martti Salmi on Unsplash

This is a new feature that I hope to make annual, celebrating all the moments where midlife women were able to shine in television and film. (I got the idea years ago from Esquire magazine, and when I features editor at The National, a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, we did it every year).

It’s mostly fun and silly – that’s the point. But stop for a few seconds and take in the reality of the monumental shift we are in the middle of: We have never had so many opportunities to see ourselves reflected back to us. Our true sexy, strong, struggling selves, not the withered, sweaty, screaming caricatures we have been reduced to in the past, the characters we were horrified by, and internalized. The characters who shaped our perception of what not only menopause, but aging in general, would be like.

I haven’t seen a woman standing frozen in front of her freezer or an executive splashing her face forlornly with water or a woman screaming her face off while everyone looks at her like she’s crazy all year. (Not that women don’t do these things in midlife. But for my entire lifetime, in the rare moments that they were depicted on-screen, it’s literally all they did)

We’ve moved so far from Edith acting like an even sadder dimwit on All in the Family, Kitty losing her mind on That 70s Show and every one else, you know, standing in front of the freezer, because that’s all the male writer can think of to impart “this is a sad, troubled woman in menopause” to the audience.

I am so proud to be witnessing this happening. To be playing a small part in helping recognize it. To see women writing us, playing us, inspiring us and helping us understand our particular piece of the human condition.

The women who came before us didn’t have that. Our mothers, our grandmothers. And for those who would argue culture is just entertainment, it’s not. What we consume plays a big part in how we feel about ourselves. And when she sits down to relax for an hour, watching a woman her age take names and speak her truth and start something new and grow because of it makes all the difference. And doing it over and over again? I need someone to assess this – any academics out there? – because for this n of 1, it’s been an important piece of support in making the massive midlife transition. We need tools, we need treatment, we need someone to listen, but we also need to see a world that reinforces that our best years aren’t behind us, that it won’t always be like this, and there is so much more waiting for us on the other side.

And if all it does is help one of us stop worrying, laugh and look up, without any of the shame these portrayals were steeped in the past, then that is everything to me.

And so, in honor of the Academy Awards screening tonight from Los Angeles, here goes.

Image viaApple TV

Best put-down of an overconfident younger male colleague:

Martha Plimpton (playing a good woman or a bad one; we can’t tell yet) in Prime Target….

Colleague: “You look fabulous Jane.”

Jane: “You look like a flight attendant.”