Fortysomethings: Why are we Generation Confused?

One day we’re normal and reasonably functioning members of society. The next we’re neurotic, raging paranoids who don’t know if we should be congratulated, commiserated with or just humanely locked up out of sight in a nice, tasteful Mrs Rochester loft conversion. Congratulations: it’s our fortieth birthday – or the ‘Big FOUR-O’, as everyone likes to tell us in deliberately loud stage whispers with appropriate hand signs. They wouldn’t like anybody not to know how grotesquely old and mockable we are. Welcome to the scary Big Person’s World.

It’s made more confusing because being in our forties isn’t what it was. Thirty years ago when our parents were the same age they seemed to know exactly what was expected of them and to do it much better. They didn’t see Middle Age as a death sentence but as an opportunity to get down and dirty with their herbaceous borders and to save wool. It was their turn to pass on the baton to the next generation – not to hang around Top Shop and scare teenage customers into thinking they were store detectives.

The problem is that, today, we lack convincing role-models and no one’s quite sure what acting your age at forty is any more. Is it about constantly re-inventing yourself like Madonna? Is it about still buying enough CDs to personally keep HMV solvent? Is it about feeling that shop assistants are ruder and that graffiti artists should at least learn to spell ‘fuck’?

Blame the sixties. Blame the ‘have it all’ eighties. Blame everyone’s rising expectations. Blame greater equality. It’s not really surprising that we’re the generation that can’t decide if we should be wowing them in the office or concentrating our efforts on being good parents – a conflict of interests that can lead to hoping no one notices that our shepherd in the school Nativity is wearing an unwashed John Lewis tea towel.

Because to be a fortysomething now is, literally, to be everything. We’re parents, step-parents, parents of second families, singletons, co-habitees, grandparents. We’re battling with babies, Bratz-crazed teenies and moody teenagers. We’re working 24/7. We’re being told we can still wear unsuitably youthful clothes and enjoy the White Stripes. We’re still having lots of sex of course – as befits the generation that likes to think it put the Joy into it. In fact, we’re behaving in a thoroughly confusing and embarrassing way to both a younger and older generation. It’s not surprising they’d much prefer it if we did some proper housework and home maintenance, as is our true destiny, and stopped making those funny movements while humming Coldplay songs.

Of course, few forties have intentions of passing on any batons yet. Though this isn’t to say that we can’t see the attractions of having long, restful, non-child-oriented holidays that don’t involve ours going down a flume in a Center Parc in February 1,894 times. And there are unquestionably things we know by our forties – about life, love, death and the correct plural of phenomenon – that make those in their twenties and thirties seem positively callow in comparison.

Middle age? Mid-youth? The beginning of wisdom? The beginning of botox? Most of us would just say plain bloody knackered actually and leave it at that.

All we can do is try not to behave too disgracefully and to act our true age, which as we all know is a perpetual eight (according to our parents), the new thirty (according to marketing departments) or at least ninety (according to our children). Er, enjoy.

Barbie at forty ...

‘Nobody told me being forty was going to be like this.

Like most of my sorority, I wasn’t looking too far in the future at that Hollywood High School graduation in 1978. Of course, I had always been quite mature for my years and people (I think we mean men here and unfortunately some feminists who should have known better) have often treated me as a sexual stereotype. People who know me would vouch that I was just an ordinary young Californian woman who had read Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch and realised she didn’t have much to worry about in that department.

But having graduated in Tennis Party Studies with Double Honours, like many of my peers I was faced with a plethora of choices about what I should be doing with the rest of my life. These included:

* Coffee morning hostess
* Ballerina
* Doctor
* McDonald’s worker
* Pilot
* Circus star
* Rock star
* Cheer leader
* Dinner party hostess
* Yoga instructor
* Astronaut
* Fashion model
* President
* Shopper
* Movie star

What was I supposed to do? It’s not really surprising that I decided to sample every one of them in my attempts to Have It All. This made it specially tough as, back then in the eighties, we were being told by Shirley ‘Superwoman’ Conran that life was too short to stuff a mushroom but, on the other hand, stuffing seemed to be the order of the day at all of the soignée dinner parties I was supposed to hold. At least being a famous astronaut enabled me to get away from this at times.

My boyfriend Ken and I had an on–off relationship for a number of years. He had asked me to marry him on several occasions, but the time had never felt right. Besides I was doing well in my chosen multiple careers and didn’t wish to be primarily known as The Person Who Washes Ken’s Lumberjack Shirt and Chinos. To be perfectly honest, as an extra in Dynasty (he was a waiter at Blake Carrington’s parties and once got to touch Joan Collins’ shoulder pad), Ken wasn’t earning a lot, and all my various salaries did create a certain imbalance in our relationship. We parted in 1996 when Ken went off into the Sierra Nevada to explore his ‘crisis of masculinity’ and discover his ‘inner stetson’, only slightly marred by his claim that I had lesbian tendencies.

I’d always been close to my nieces and nephews and, although I hadn’t discounted the idea of having children, with my extensive career portfolio and the long hours worked, having a child would have been a disaster. I think I just followed the zeitgeist and it didn’t seem to want to lead anywhere involving strawberry Calpol. But then it slowly dawned on me that my heroine Madonna – we’re nearly the same age – already had two children and a new one recently flown in from Africa and there was something in my life that wasn’t being satisfied even by one of my most recent careers as US ambassador. I began dating again.

I am currently three months pregnant at the age of forty-eight and dreading telling my boss, who I just know will say that I’m the person who had to go and have sex and screw the whole company. I forgot to tell you that the father is Ken – we had a rapprochement. I did some speed dating and guess who was the first person who didn’t hide in the toilet because he couldn’t take the pressure of being a celebrity’s boring partner as soon as he saw who I was? He is dreaming of organising a neighbourhood soccer team and owning a shed for the first time in his life. I am happy, I think, although worried that I won’t have an outfit for ‘Child Vomiting at Frequent Intervals That Will Also Have To Be Worn in Business Meeting’, but Ken thinks he may have an old fleece I can wear.’

Fortysomethings and cut-price CDS

At first you can’t believe your luck when you see that all your favourite groups and singers from the seventies and eighties are drastically reduced. But then grow depressed when you realise that no one else in the industrialised world wants to listen to songs from the Dr Strangely Strange back catalogue any more apart from you.

Fortysomethings and BBC 2

Apparently BBC2 is the TV station most likely to be viewed by the over-forties and quite honestly we’re not surprised. But maybe don’t tell anyone you turned over to watch Meerkat Manor because you thought (a) West Wing, with its overlapping dialogue, makes you think your hearing is going; (b) Lost is where your most cliched holiday nightmare ever meets The Famous Five Have a Wonderful Adventure on Kirrin Island; (c) Big Brother was the closest thing you had seen to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire since your last office Christmas party.

Fortysomethings and body piercing

Just as reason separates us from the animals, so horror at having parts of our body stapled with bits of metal and taking several hours to pass through airport security separates us from youth. If, under any circumstances, you still feel tempted, remind yourself to hang on in there as there’s always your first hip replacement to look forward to.

Fortysomethings and birthdays

For those who’ve had children, birthdays – sadly – can never be quite the same again. Whether it’s the shopping in Toys R Us, getting the party theme right or the cost, they tend nowadays unsurprisingly to trigger an allergic reaction of fear and loathing.

And, of course, when it comes to your own birthday, there are now plenty of depressing scenarios revolving around (a) your age – do you really wish to receive ‘humorous’ cards reminding you that your womb and other internal and external organs and pieces of your body are either shrinking or falling to earth? (b) the fact that you’ve been around so long and have enough gift toiletry sets to sink the QE2. Is there really anything else they can buy you?

Added to which, the unfortunate truth is that reaching your forties is highly amusing to everyone apart from yourself. You’re hardly a spring chicken, but on the other hand still have some miles to go before achieving anything approaching gravitas or having people actually respect you. You’re definitely on the up and up, but think of it as Shooter’s Hill or the highest village in Essex rather than anything for anyone to get very excited about. Eventually, don’t worry, you’ll get brownie points and hopefully something nice for having survived that long. But in the meantime, some like to remind you that now you’ve finally passed the point of no return you definitely deserve a present that allows you to draw attention to yourself.

Whether your present is in the form of a day’s hang-gliding (we heard you had a death wish), a Ray Mears Survival Day (we heard you liked road kill) or a luxurious spa day (you’re a middle-aged woman, goddammit, and we couldn‘t think what else to get you), they’re all felt to be excellent ways of celebrating your mid-life crisis. All you can do is ask yourself is, after forty or more years on this planet, do your friends and relatives really see you as a sad, strange person on a suicide mission or in desperate need of deep-pore cleansing? Er, yes, probably.

Favourite Forties Birthday Presents for Men

Buena Vista Social Club
Historical novels about Roman centurion serial killers
Atlas for when the sat nav doesn’t work
Nose and ear hair clippers
Weekend washbag
Greatest Ever Football Matches DVD
Car cleaning kit
Edinburgh Military Tattoo CD
Set of Romanian spanners
Golf ball soaps
Model vintage car
Socks with clocks on
Miniature golf set


Favourite Forties Birthday Presents for Women

Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits
Book with inspirational thoughts about the menopause
Aromatherapy starter kit
Joanna Harris novel about owning a chocolate shop in France
Trug set
Hyacinth to keep in your cupboard until next Christmas
M&S perfume
Teaspoon to start your collection
Pomander
Scented drawer liners
Gift toiletry set
Ice cream making set
Pashmina
Padded coat hangers
Rampant Rabbit vibrator with a chocolate

Fortysomething men and barbecues

It is expected that sooner or later the forties man will wish to purchase a barbecue. By succumbing to his ‘inner sausage-pricker’, he is answering a call that lies deep in the male psyche to have a burning pyre in his own back garden and to wear a plastic-bra-and-panties apron. After all, if he can no longer hunt, kill and maim, he can do the next best thing and perform violent acts upon a piece of marinated meat surrounded by his neighbours. This is, of course, provided he can actually light the barbecue and (a) it doesn’t rain; (b) the Force 11 gale subsides; (c) none of the vegetarians present will mind a nice bit of Angus steak.

Everyone compliments him on his ability to successfully burn food, while his partner, who has done the family cooking for twenty years and never received any praise, is a little put out and suggests he might like to try bringing his ‘transferable skills’ into the kitchen. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when he watches Ray Mears, and the barbecue becomes the new rockery as he moves on to roasting hedgehogs on a bonfire.