Flourish, Not Fade

Which one of us doesn’t feel younger than our years? Who amongst us doesn’t sometimes look in the mirror and feel slightly startled by the reflection staring back at them? We begin to wonder when the spider’s web of fine lines became woven around our eyes and how laughter lines became a permanent feature on our faces rather than just an occasional reflection of having a good time. Our hands feel the curves of what were once concave stomachs that have now gently rounded out – regardless of whether we’ve had children – while our skin slowly loosens and becomes gently peppered with sunspots instead of freckles.

One of the most perplexing things about growing older is that our minds and bodies seem to subdivide. The latter expresses all of the physical effects that naturally come with surviving into middle age and beyond, but our minds often stay stuck in an earlier decade. In my head, for instance, I’ll be forever 21 (pardon the pun). This gap between the age we feel and our chronological age is called our “subjective age” and according to a BBC article in 2018, “‘subjective age’ may be essential for understanding the reasons that some people appear to flourish as they age – while others fade.”

Could this theory around “subjective age” be a factor in the rise of women in middle age presenting with eating disorders? According to a 2018 report by Bodywhys, the eating disorders association of Ireland, 40% of women who contacted the service were between the ages of 36 and 55. That’s only 3% less than the number of adolescents and young adults combined (43%) who sought help. And of the total number of callers, 71% were suffering from anorexia. What was most striking in this report, however, was the huge leap in midlife sufferers since 2016 – up from 17% (there are no figures yet for 2019).

Is the gulf between the age we feel and the one printed on our passports putting us under pressure to do the impossible – marry the two by trying to achieve the physicality of our younger years? In my twenties, I was obsessed with being thin, to the point that I attended an eating disorders clinic in London as an outpatient for several months. I became addicted to watching the digits on the weighing scales fall and this was only fuelled by my love of shopping – I felt an additional adrenaline rush each time I fit into a smaller dress size. As my body shrank and I grew weaker physically, perversely, I felt stronger mentally and emotionally. I eventually grew out of this dysfunctional obsession, but I’d be lying if I pretended that I wasn’t still preoccupied with being thin. Do I still covet the body of my 21-year-old self because I’m stuck in an emotional time warp?

Either way, I often hate myself for it. I’m a feminist and one of the most profound books I ever read in college was The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. In the 1990 work she asserts, “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.” I know what it’s like to go quietly mad – to be goggle-eyed from going over and over in my head whether or not to eat an apple worth 50 calories; to have my head filled with nothing but figures generated by an internal calculator, which automatically tallys calories, one carb-free meal at a time. Whatever mental energy an individual with an eating disorder has is absorbed wholly by the illness rather than by their relationship, career, friendships or hobbies.
It’s destructive to mind, body and soul.

According to Harvard Health, there is actually an underdiagnosis of eating disorders in older women because many feel shame at suffering from what is considered a “teenage disease” and so they conceal the condition. It’s also true that restrictive food intake disorder has become so common among women that many don’t see it as an illness at all only a lifestyle choice. Psychology Today reported that eating disorder symptoms in women are most common during adolescence, dip between 25 and 34 and rise again from 45 to 54, the peaks coinciding with puberty and perimenopause. In midlife our metabolism begins to slow down, meaning the same eating and exercise habits we followed in our younger years won’t have the same effect on our bodies today. Spikes in cortisol and dips in testosterone can also cause bloating and a lack of energy, hitting women with a double dose of frustration and negativity.

Which one of us isn’t blindsided by what our bodies go through in midlife? That word “menopause” seems to me to be one great big euphemistic umbrella term for a whole host of unforeseen changes that could, should and do happen without warning in our 40s and beyond. Midlife is also a time when women can experience dramatic changes in both their careers (pivots, redundancies) and relationships (divorce, empty-nest syndrome), and it can all add up to the need for one enormous supportive crutch; for some that’s an eating regime which makes you feel in control of something. The reality too is that 30 years after The Beauty Myth was first published we still live in a world where thinness is applauded, whichever way it’s achieved.

There’s a part of me that’s reluctant to let nature take its course and yield to the curves and softness I feel are beginning to define my body now that I’m in my mid-forties. There are days when I still want my 21-year-old body back. The reality is, though, that I partially starved myself to have that body, plus I eradicated almost all spontaneity from my life to achieve it (no “off the cuff” “shall we go grab some food” moments for me; if I hadn’t planned for the calories, I wasn’t consuming them). I understand it makes no sense to live like that – nor does it sound like fun – but of course eating disorders are a mental illness first and foremost, not a physical one, and so logic and rationalisations become redundant. I felt what I felt at the time. Being thin was everything.

Now it is not everything, and so my rational, middle-aged mind makes me eat sensibly, exercise most of the time (and avoid wearing skinny jeans because who needs the grief), and whenever I feel dissatisfied with my body, which is healthy and strong and in reasonable shape, I read the following beautiful words, also from The Beauty Myth, “Her body fills itself, taking on gravity like a bather breasting water, growing generous with the rest of her. The darkening under her eyes, the weight of her lids, their minute cross-hatching, reveal that what she has been part of has left her its complexity and richness. She is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.”

Like every other woman, I want to flourish in midlife not fade. So I think it’s time I dragged my subjective age out of the late nineties and into the same decade as my chronological age. Of course, all I really need do is look at my mortgage statement every day – that always makes me feel really old. My thighs are looking better already.

Marie Kelly, July 2020.
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