It’s past midnight, and I’m social scrolling when I should be sleeping. Night sweats have lured me back to my phone.

As the dog snores beside me I flick through a blur of celebrity ‘tell all’s’ and ‘life crashes.’ My eyes brim as I’m hit by a flood of bile.

Headlines hum with hate. Not for corrupt MPs, global ecocide or social injustice – hate for the ‘ageing’ female. Hate for the ‘hags’ who fail to stop the clock.

“The SHAME of Natalie Portman’s Lost Looks,” “Jennifer Aniston Let’s Greys SHOW.” “Reece Witherspoon Looks OLD.” “Oprah Got FAT.”

“Ugly!” “Worn Out!” “Washed Up!” – this is the media mantra stinging my eyes and stoking my ire. This is 21st century ageism in action – this is misogyny unmasked.

It seems in the west women are not ALLOWED to age. We’re not permitted to accept our fading looks with good grace and live out our lives.

Instead, we must yoke onto ‘youth.’ We must submit to needles of toxins in our faces. We must buy potions. We must diet, dye and cry.

We should CRY endlessly for our lost youths. We should stew in the shame of sands slipping through hourglass. We should hanker after the past not the future.

From the age of 35 our core mission is to outrun the conveyor of life. To kid ourselves we can retain the glow of youth – rather than accept the truth.

The truth that we ARE ageing. That, despite the world’s infatuation with ‘staying young,’ we’re growing older. We cannot go back in time, only forward.

So we become the victims of the ad men selling faux elixirs to turn back clocks. Rather than embracing now we hold a flame for yesterday.

As a middle aged woman, it’s easy to feel beaten down by this rhetoric. As hormonal symptoms creep you can feel obsolete. You can look in the mirror and feel shame not love.

But what if we refuse to let society taint our ageing years? What if we say “F*ck you!” to the youth obsessed commentators? What if we opt to LOVE our selves. To trace our lines, stroke our greys and cradle our loosening skin.

Because to reach midlife and beyond is a gift that not everyone unwraps. We owe it to those who fall short of the milestone to relish this chapter – to embrace our elderhood.

This is the rallying cry of Dr Sharon Blackie’s transformational book, Hagitude: Reimagining The Second Half of Life. This riveting read exposes how western society has derided our value as vibrant, older women. She explores how once revered female elders have been marginalised over time.

How, across centuries the patriarchy got rattled by women’s potency. How our primal connection with nature, healing and the spirit world marked us out. And so we were burned at stakes, chained to sinks and denied a voice…until we pushed back!

And this moment to push back has returned. It’s time to reclaim the narrative on ageing and reject this media misogyny. No digital channel has the right to govern our self esteem. We must reject these headlines of hate.

As vibrant, older women it’s time to step into our power and steal the oxygen from ageism. Let’s seek out role models and archetypes that celebrate life’s journey. Let’s reconnect with our needs and desires. Let’s run towards our older years with hunger and with hope.

In the rallying words of Blackie (2022) “There can be a perverse pleasure, as well as a sense of rightness and beauty, in insisting on flowering just when the world expects you to become quiet and diminish.”