Surprisingly Sexy

5 minute read

There was a man I knew when I was in my 20s who always told me I was sexy. He was a friend, but we flirted too. He was a bit older than me and I knew he meant it but it used to make me cringe. Sexy? No, not me. I had always gotten on well with men and had had some success with nabbing boyfriends over the years, but it was, I always felt, down to a heady mix of humour, fun and dance moves. I had friends who were definitely, objectively sexy. There was confidence in the way they moved and spoke, maturity, and a sureness about them. You could see the way men and women looked at them and it definitely wasn’t how they looked at me.

One drunken night my friend introduced me to a pal of his, this is my sexy Jen he said. I remember it so clearly, though it must be about 17 years ago. I blushed and when we were at the bar I told him to stop calling me sexy, it was ridiculous. He turned and looked at me, one of those moments when you can feel eyes bore right through you. He breathed out and laughed. “You have no idea sweetheart,” he said and walked off with our drinks.

One of the most surprising things about turning 40, then, was feeling sexy. My self-esteem had improved over the years and though I wouldn’t necessarily have described myself as such, the way I felt about myself had moved on through my 30s.

But now, at 43, I think I am sexy. Go figure! It's one of the nicer parts of ageing especially in a world designed to tell women our age that we're on the shelf.

Sexiness comes with confidence, with acceptance, and with knowing what you want, and I've at last managed to get about 50% of the way to some of those things.

The crippling anxiety that comes with trying to find a partner, establish a career, maintain a social life and save for the future is somewhat diminished by the time you reach this decade and that frees up brain space to help you cop on a bit.

I wasn’t, I can see now, unsexy, I was just thinking about it too much. In hindsight, the friends I thought were sexy in my late teens and early 20s just didn’t care what most people thought of them. What a luxury it must be to know that other people’s opinions just don’t matter and that everyone is usually too busy worrying about themselves to care about you.

I wouldn’t have imagined that feeling like this was possible when I was in my 20s because I presumed that by the time I was 40 I’d be a grey-haired old woman dragging a shopping trolley behind me while wearing a headscarf.

I wasn’t plucking that image out of thin air. Articles about women over 40 were usually illustrated by someone I assume was at least 20 years older. Clothes meant for women from 45 on were comfortable at best, something Peig might wear at worst. And that’s if you saw a woman over 40. In some parts of the media, they just didn’t seem to exist.

In movies and on TV, female characters were young and vital and beautiful. If there had to be someone even slightly older, they were dowdy, elderly or Kathy Bates breaking someone’s knees.

In the early 2000s, if you had told me that JLo would still be as hot as the face of the sun in 2021 I would have laughed. She’ll be 51 I would have thought, surely she’ll be staring in a reboot of the Golden Girls – actually, wouldn’t that be amazing?

Then there’s Kate Beckinsale who I adore. Finding her on Instagram was a revelation. She’s almost 48 and as well as being a complete ride, she’s also hilarious. There’s nothing on the shelf about her.

And of course, it’s basically against the law to write a piece about sexy women over 40 and leave out Liz Hurley, who at 55 looks unreal and makes a fortune by selling the bikinis she poses in on social media.

I’ve just finished the Bold Type on Netflix. Don’t get me started on Jane’s workload, it’s completely at odds to any magazine journalist living in Ireland, but I did really enjoy a storyline where Editor-in-Chief Jaqueline Carlyle was made to feel sexy by a new beau. Melora Hardin who plays her is 53 and completely stunning. It was refreshing to see because another NYC-based show really failed when it came to the subject. The constant jokes about Samantha’s age used to really bother me in Sex and the City. She was just a couple of years older than the others and yet there were reminders about it everywhere – don’t even get me started on that menopause bit in the truly catastrophic second movie, it was shameful. Yes, I know the whole show is problematic, but the treatment of Samantha has always felt really ageist to me.

Of course, we definitely haven’t come far enough but things are changing, albeit slowly. Men on TV sometimes now have wives the same age as them and even the tabloids love a photo of Helen Mirren in a bikini.

Nothing can help 26-year-old me and my inability to recognise my sexiness but at least when I eventually found it it was now and not in 2004 when I might have been forced into orthopaedic shoes and a sensible skirt.

I can’t wait to go back out gallivanting and when I do I hope I bump into my old friend. This time when he calls me sexy, I can say, you know what pal? You’re right. I am.

Jennifer Stevens, May 2021