Pleasure and the midlife woman

Talking freedom, confidence, agency, knowing what you want and asking for it, sex, bikes and recognising and celebrating our prime with Glynnis MacNichol

There’s a lot of conversation about midlife right now. Menopause. Rage. (So much rage.) But not so much about the good stuff. Good stuff, you say? Yes! Good stuff, because contrary to what the powers that be might want you to believe, there’s a hella load of joy on the far side. And… wait for it. Pleasure. That, to my mind, is why journalist and writer

Glynnis MacNicol

found herself with a sleeper hit on her hands when she decided to write a book about the month she spent in her mid-forties pursuing pleasure of all sorts (sex, yes, but also fun, food, friendship, community and more) in Paris when lockdown lifted.

A woman heading for 50 on a mission to enjoy the hell out of life? I’m in.

As well as the sex, Glynnis’ memoir, I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself, one woman’s pursuit of pleasure in Paris looks at the narratives women are sold from the moment we can walk and talk (if not before) and what happens when the life you find yourself leading in midlife doesn’t tick the boxes you spent the past few decades being told you should tick. What happens when you turn life’s corner – could be 45, could be earlier, could be later, could be much later – and discover that suddenly you’re all out of roadmap? What does it mean to be a woman in midlife without a narrative? And how can we make that work in our favour? If you’re looking for answers, or just suggestions, or even just a glimmer of hope, allow me to introduce your new patron saint!

The older I get, the more I'm able to enjoy my own body. And part of the ironic benefit of having so few narratives around this era of life is that you don't feel punished by them either

Sam: were you surprised by the sleeper success, if you like, of I'm only here to enjoy myself?

Glynnis: it’s very hard to gauge success when you’re in the the middle of it. Launching a book is such a strange, difficult experience, particularly in the media environment we live in now, it’s so fractured. Ten years ago you could do one morning show and get a sense of success, now it’s much more piecemeal.

I love the cover, we got a Boucher painting that I had seen in the Louvre. And I've worked in media for a long time as a freelance writer and that hones your sense of where culture is headed. So I had a sense that we were hitting the moment a little bit and All Fours, Miranda July’s novel, had come out four-six weeks before mine [was published in the States]. Which is funny because on the one hand I, when I was writing I'm mostly here to enjoy myself, I was like, oh, this is very new and it's gonna be slightly shocking. And I was prepared for that. And then All Fours came and I thought, ‘oh, no, I’m part of a moment’. You have no idea you’re part of a moment until you’re in the moment.

It’s had a very long tail because it published in America last June [and it’s just been published in the UK] so eventually you realize that the conversation is ongoing and you're hearing from people consistently, which is wonderful. So many wonderful books don’t get to maintain that level of attention so I feel very fortunate.

When we sold the book, they gave the option of publishing it this summer instead of last summer. And I said, no, I think we should publish in 2024 because we don’t know what the world will look like after the American election in 2024. I felt strongly that I knew what the world would look like - at least some sense of it - and in that sense I was right. I think people were very much craving something smart but something that, as the title suggests, was enjoyable. This sense of pleasure and slight decadence. But in the 12 months since I think we've moved into a much more anxious era for a good reason. We’re living in a much different world now.

I feel like of all the many (non fiction) books published about midlife and menopause in the last five years yours is the only one that’s talked about pleasure.

I'm happy to hear that. Definitely when I got back from that summer, I returned and we sold the book. And even through last year when I was promoting it, I really wanted to emphasise that to people. Of course so much of the early coverage was about the sex. And the first round of readers were like, there’s not nearly as much sex in here as I was led to believe! I very much wanted to write about all the different ways women access pleasure and that so often that gets reduced down to romance. Or sex. When it’s so much more varied. It comes from so many different places. And only one small part of it has to do with heterosexual male relationships, even though the narratives around it are so often focused on that.

I really wanted to lean into the pleasure of food, the pleasure of touch, the pleasure of friendship, community. I joked early on that this was a love letter to my bike because I bike everywhere. And I really wanted to emphasise the pleasure of agency and movement, you know? Women’s ability to go wherever they want, whenever they want. On the scale of history that was so recent, and so radical. And now I think, sadly, some elements of that are under attack, so I really wanted to lean into all of that and then also say, you know, everything sexual is still available to us whenever we want it.

This idea that somehow we become invisible, or grateful, is the complete opposite of my experience. A lot of my writing is focused on the narrative we've been fed about how it’s going to go and then the reality of how I experienced it and this enormous divide between the two of them.