Is the midlife conversation about to stall?

I thought we were starting to take back the narrative. This week two things happened that made me think I was wrong

Kristin Scott Thomas, taboo-busting as post-menopausal Belinda in Fleabag

I thought we were there. Or if not there, then well on the way to being somewhere better. The change that has happened in the conversation about midlife/middle-age/whatever you want to call it in just the last three years since I pitched the proposal for The Shift to publishers has been exponential. I mean, we’ve gone from “who’s going to buy a book about middle aged women and menopause?” (Yes, that is a real quote from a real sales director at a publishing house) to the bookshelves being awash with them. So, progress. Of sorts.

I thought older women – by which I mean women who are past the “why haven’t you had babies yet, tick tock tick tock” stage of life – had started to move into the public domain and have a greater presence in our workplaces, on our screens and in o…