post number one hundred and...44!

How appropriate, because my topic this evening is ageism, and being 44.

I've just spent this surfing session reading Dr Phil on being single (it has been too long, Dr Phil, I should have turned to you ages ago), and his key message is that a girl needs to identify her best qualities and fully embrace them and present them to the world. And that if you try to hide, or pretend to be whatever you think it is men want, or adopt fake characteristics, "you will look as fake as a Halloween mask and just as scary!" He says you shouldn't try to change things that can't be changed, you should embrace them. So, one thing you shouldn't do is lie about your age.

What is it to be 44? Or, more, what is good about it? I've been struggling with it. I think I do have some self-defeating beliefs about being too old, about not being breeding stock any more so who would want me, about my ageing skin and ageing boobs, and about the fact that any man over 40 and still single probably has something really badly wrong with him, so what are my prospects?

Does age even matter in relationships? Not in acquaintences or friendships, not at all, but in an exclusive relationship partnership, probably. What is the biggest thing about it? Seems to be what music you were listening to at what point in your life? Is that such a big thing? I keep meeting people who were born after I left college (after I left college, not even when I was in it), and then I hear songs and am very conscious that those songs were out before they were even born. What would it be like to have REM be a band that was out before you were born? As opposed to Elvis and Buddy Holly? Agh, I find it shudderingly weird - but then probably everyone goes through this at age 40-something, when people can be peers who were born when you were already fully an adult. I also have friends who are more than 60, so the same thing applies - I was born when they were already fully an adult. So I should probably just get used to this.

Here are beliefs I should try to mantra about.

• No one could be attracted to a woman over 40. I'm not "a woman over 40", I'm me. It's possibly someone someday might be attracted to me.
• Even though I could probably pass as less than 40, I should just own and embrace my age and be proud of it.
• The baby thing. If the whole baby thing was crucially important, medical science could probably provide a way to try, and if it didn't happen, well, younger women are dealing with that every day. It's not the end of the world. (Just the end of the genetic line, but not the end of the world.)
• If someone were the right guy but the wrong age, but it was really real, even his mother who was only 10 years older than me would accept it and be supportive. People respond positively to really real things.

I was just thinking I should spend a day wearing a button that says "I am 44". Just have it out there. Which would be making too big a deal of it, of course, but then it made me think of how many things on television send the message that you should hide it. The Olay "Fight the 7 signs of aging ads" (just as well I've changed moisturizers lately), with the woman who smiles cheekily at us and says, "I'm 48." Like it's a shocking revelation. The whole vile Mark Phillipousis show, where the ad shows the woman saying, "I'm 48," and him reacting with job-dropped shock. The show Life Begins, where the woman says, "I'm 40!" but looks heaps older, portly and frumpy and just-don't-care-any-more, and in that scene where she's scaring off the teenaged boy from dating her daughter she talks about how irrational woman can get during the menopause. Menopause! At 40! No, you don't have menopause at 40, you have it at 50, plus or minus. Come on people.

Big button, "I am 44." Psychically. Karmically. Proudly. It means nothing, really. My life is just my life, I am just me. I have never lived a normal life doing things everyone expects when everyone else does them - not ever, ever, ever. So the fact that there's no extant script for how the fuck you're supposed to do this, my life, now, makes no difference.

More work on my positive qualities soon. And I might pick up that Dr Phil book.