Marian Keyes: 'I am not afraid. I can't be reduced to a mute, shame-filled ball of nothing by a snarky look or an unpleasant word. That's a lovely feeling.'
Five years on from the very first episode of The Shift podcast, we're revisiting a groundbreaking conversation that smashed open the door on menopause, ageing and misogyny
Next Tuesday it will be five years since The Shift was born, first as a book and a podcast, and now with this newsletter and community. Spending an hour a week talking candidly about the highs, lows and even lowers of midlife, menopause and beyond doesn’t sound that radical now; not in a world where we have menopause warriors and books about menopause smashing the bestseller lists and celebrities as far as the eye can see promoting their menopause wares. (Pink tea, anyone?!)
But back then, nobody was talking about menopause, far from it, and I encountered an awful lot of ‘no way, are you kidding me’s?’ before I managed to persuade a few wonderful women to be guests on the first ever series of the podcast. One of the very first women I spoke to was the legendary novelist (and, full disclosure, my good friend) Marian Keyes.
Always the best of women, Marian didn’t think twice. She said yes straightaway and gamely agreed to be interviewed across a mic perched on ironing board in a hotel room four floors above Liverpool city centre while we were on tour for her book, Grown Ups. (Since then she has published two massive bestellers, Again, Rachel, the sequel to her much-loved Rachel’s Holiday, and My Favourite Mistake. She has sold 40 million copies and her beloved Walsh sisters series is being adapted for TV.)
(Btw, it was the first time I'd used an ironing board in decades, and I haven’t used one since, but I can affirm it was perfectly fit for purpose! So if you ever need to set up an impromptu studio, the ironing board is your friend.)
‘I have never felt unfuckable after a certain age because I never really felt that fuckable in the first place. That isn't kind of false modesty. It is simply that my looks were not my defining characteristic.’
Marian has never not spoken the truth and she did so here. Her conversation, and the others in the first series of The Shift podcast, set the tone for the subsequent 18 series. Yep, 18! And still going strong. 250-odd episodes and approaching 5 million downloads. Just writing that makes my mind boggle.
Listening back to this conversation, which took place back in 2020 (not long before the world locked down), I could hardly fathom how much things had changed in the subsequent five years. For good and for ill. No Ozempic, no Trump (well, not this time), no millennial-Gen Z sock-related spats, no Nicole Kidman owning the psychological thriller streaming space, menopause was just a twinkle in Oprah’s eye, ‘skinny’ wasn’t ‘back’ (as if it ever went away), girls on Instagram didn’t routinely look like boiled eggs… (And that’s before you even get started on the rolling back of women’s rights, Ukraine, Gaza, the economy, the hottest summer since records began…)
What I’m trying to say is, this time five years ago, when it was rare for a woman in the public eye to admit to her real age for fear of losing her job, let alone having experienced menopause, this conversation was a real groundbreaker. So much so that it’s been listened to over 70,000 times.
Anyway, Marian was at the vanguard of all that as she candidly discussed menopause, mental health, invisibility, infertility, loss, HRT, Botox, body image and learning to be shameless in her fifties. Here it is…
Sam: So, Marian. Before we get into the nitty gritty, let's talk a little bit about your bestselling new book Grownups.
Marian: Okay. Yeah, it's called Grown Ups and the title is sort of ironic in that I'm 56 and I'm still waiting to feel that feeling of confidence and sureness and answerable-to-nobodyness that I thought being grown up would actually be. And instead, I feel as uncertain and worried and ill-equipped for the world as I always did. So I've written a book about people who look like grownups on the outside, but have those same feelings they had when they were younger.
Do you think anybody feels grown up?
I've wondered about that. I mean, I do think there are kind of outliers, if that's how you pronounce it. Is it outliers? Or outliers? There are exceptions! I think people with kind of abnormally strong self belief, just people who are kind of unnaturally confident. They probably think they’re grown up. And I think if people have been given privilege and have always been told that they're wonderful and, you know, life works smoothly for them as a result of their privilege, they probably feel like they are making it happen themselves.
A proper grownup needs to be very humble. I think humility and acceptance are true grown up qualities, and I think very few people have them. People who have them don't acknowledge that this is actually what grown up means.
I remember when I was a kid in the seventies – that's how old I am – thinking, oh, when the millennium comes, I'm gonna be 34. I might as well be dead. That's so old.
Yes. Yeah. It's hilarious. Yeah. I look back and it was nothing. My thirties were so young.
I know. It's depressing, isn't it?
Yeah. But at the same time, I think age has changed and that fifties is still young.
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And that's not just 'cause we are fifties.
No, the world has changed. The idea of like a woman, the minute she hit 40, she was like a goner. She became completely invisible and she was meant to act like she was like on the brink of death. There was meant to be nothing spontaneous or enjoyable or opinionated in her life. She was just meant to kind of be a thing and not a person any longer.
So you mentioned invisibility, so let's talk about that. Since you've been in your fifties, have you started to feel that much vaunted invisibility kicking in?
You see, I always felt invisible. I am not a noticeable person. I just don't have that light that young women have. I think people only ever really notice me after they've been speaking to me for a while. I've always had this kind of invisibility cloak, I've always been ignored in shops or overlooked by men.
Is that really true?
No, it's really true. It's really true. I know it sounds… revisionist maybe? No, it was the case. I didn't have the confidence, you know, I wasn't confident in my body, and I never dressed in a way that was kind of provocative or glamorous. So there hasn't been that awful loss that I know a lot of women feel once they get to a certain age and maybe they feel that they were very beautiful when they were younger and suddenly that part of them isn't there anymore. I've never had that.