By Keri Forsythe-Stephens 
The night started in what can only be described as a mother’s paradise. The kids were downstairs—maybe being watched by their dads, maybe not. They were finally old enough that we didn’t have to hover. My friend and I shut my bedroom door, crawled into bed, and queued up the latest Amazon Prime thriller. Think of it as a modern-day Dawson’s Creek: flawless teens on one side, their weary mothers on the other.
“Is it weird,” I asked, “that I relate more to the 16-year-olds than their moms?”
“No,” she said. “Because I do too.”
We laughed, deep lines carving into the corners of our eyes and mouths. (My 11-year-old daughter loved to remind me that Botox wasn’t the enemy, though I’d managed to resist—so far.) Our bodies had betrayed us: seven years postpartum, and perimenopausal all at once. Yet in our minds, we were still those girls—beautiful, wrinkle-free, ingénues. Call it a Catch-42.
When I was younger, I pictured 42 much differently. A cross between Zach Morris’ mom (did she even have a name?) and the mom from Step by Step, the women I envisioned only mattered in relation to the main characters. They were filler. They were irrelevant. Worse, they were old.
But when you’re a teenager, you believe you’ll stay like that forever. Weddings and babies seem like an inevitable—and even favorable—ending; after that, the screen goes blank. Nobody pictures themselves beyond the blur of raising kids. Midlife—even the clichés of a sports car and a younger boyfriend—feels far off, maybe even impossible.
And yet. I am here, the definition of a midlife cliché. My “girls’ nights” (women’s nights just doesn’t have the same ring) consist of my friends and me talking about our children’s schedules, bad teachers, perimenopause and its telltale sign—the weighted vest—, and our husbands. We talk a little too loudly after our requisite margaritas, laugh a little too deeply about our need for plastic surgery and Ozempic, and compare notes on the most recent middle-school drama like it’s a national crisis. And we become filler.
“How are you?” we ask each other, never expecting to hear anything about the other person. We exist only in relation to our people—our children, spouses, aging parents. “I’m good. You know Paisley made competition cheer so that means I’m now her taxi service.” We all shake our heads in agreement, feeling the familiar weight of being in the supportive role. We are no longer the heroine in our story; we are her helper. In Spandex.
A few weeks ago, I met another girlfriend (woman-friend? Lady friend sounds unnecessarily romantic?) for sushi, and we laughed at the cute waiter. He called us both “ma’am.” He was closer in age to our children than to us.
“Do you think people look at us anymore?” I asked her. We had met in our mid-20s, all wide-eyed with tanned skin and toned bodies. “Definitely not,” she answered. “And I think that’s hard because you lose the pretty privilege in your 40s.”
Now, 20 years later and 20 pounds heavier, I “look good for my age” and get the occasional compliment that feels more like consolation than admiration. The spotlight has shifted, and I’m now applauded for strength, resilience, or juggling life without completely losing my mind. (The latter would be a lie, but I’ll gladly play into the farce.)
Pretty privilege, like my youth, is over.
And yet. There’s a strange comfort in no longer being defined by my appearance. I go to the nearby grocery store in my husband’s shirt, my daughter’s Crocs, and whatever shorts I pull out of my drawer. And it’s fine because nobody is looking anyway. The invisibility cloak of my 40s is becoming my superpower.
My daughter still has concerns, though. My 20-year college reunion is coming up, and my preteen is worried that I won’t brush my hair for it. (“The mom bun,” she said, “has got to go.”) Brush or no brush, the fact remains: I don’t look the same as I did in 2005. And neither do my peers.
My body now wears the scars of two C-sections, one double mastectomy (and three breast reconstructions), and a hysterectomy. It also wears the grief of losing one of my best friends to brain cancer and the joy of still being able to do hard yoga poses and run fast after my kids. It is my Catch-42.
It holds the stories and scars of my youth—the piece of asphalt on my right hip from falling during a high school track meet, the ill-advised lower back tattoo I got at 19, and the lines from laughing at my son when he smeared a T-shirt in a pickle bar at age 2. It holds my past, and it holds the in-between—the 30-something and now 40-something years that felt like filler but actually make up the rich, messy, and unmistakably mine life I lead today.
Perhaps the real power of this age isn’t in being looked at or admired, but in finally seeing myself. In choosing to live for the stories, not the spotlight. In embracing the full spectrum of what it means to be a woman, a mother, a friend, a previvor. And that, at last, feels like the kind of privilege that never fades—Crocs or no Crocs.
by Mary McConville 
by Whitney Westbrook 
by Kelsey Scism 
