Don’t trust anyone over thirty. It was the bold statement of Boomers in the sixties to early seventies until they themselves crossed the threshold into their thirties. Naturally, it meant they were changing their tunes, proving that both women and men were using their right to change their minds.
The change in attitude led to a new way to look at aging across the board. When going through history’s images of both famous and everyday people, you can see how the very appearance of middle-aged people is vastly different. Simply put, it’s not representative of how your great-grandparents’ aged or of any previous generations prior to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The change in aging is not only a result of better technology and medical breakthroughs in treating diseases and conditions that once shortened lifespans, or even the availability of plastic surgery, Botox, and fillers to keep faces looking dewy and tight long after our twenties. It is also due to those who don’t look at middle-age as a time to slow down.
You are more likely to find grandmothers and grandfathers taking a spin class, leading yoga sessions, riding bikes, hiking, and going on holidays to show off some pretty tight bodies on the beach or the slopes. The same applies in terms of following their passion and turning a side hustle into a business to embrace entrepreneurship. Others are going back to school to go into another career altogether. Married couples are rediscovering their relationships as men and women, and not just parents and grandparents. Divorced and single men and women are looking to internet dating sites for those over forty and fifty to meet new people and perhaps find the love of their lives to share their second act with. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
My second act is the reason I started Still A Chick-Lit. It’s also because of a woman that I had the privilege of working for and calling a friend, Dr. Cecile Forte. I worked with her on her groundbreaking internet radio show Who You Calling Old. Through the show and the many guests we had over the years, I had the opportunity to meet so many people who were doing amazing things in their forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies plus. They were motivated and loving every moment. Dr. Forte used the John Mayer’s Don’t Stop This Train as the apropos theme song for the broadcast. I hope to inspire others to follow their hearts and do what they love.
The world of publishing told me that women my age weren’t chicks anymore. Any novels with characters north of forty and fifty plus should be called hen-lit. While hen-lit is a little better than matron-lit, women generally don’t like to be referred to as hens, unless it’s a bachelorette party in the UK. The image of a group of women cackling like hens comes to mind and that isn’t a cool image to me. Being a chick is a state of mind. It’s feeling confident in your skin. Loving your life, body, and age knowing it’s just a number. I hope my novels will inspire and I am looking forward to relaunching the Still A Chick Lit Podcast at the end of January with the voices of other north of forty and fifty-plus female writers and entrepreneurs who are following their dreams and having the time of the lives.
