Save the Date & a Journaling Prompt📔🖋️
It's our first salon on the Science of Thriving: A Midlife You Love... By Design.
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Fellow Empresses, How the hell are you?
I don’t know about you, but I am digging the latest round of FEUD: Capote vs. The Swans. It is a perfect storm of competing agendas… all fighting for relevance and cultural visibility in midlife New York society.
On the one hand, Tom Hollander as Capote is this superbly smarmy, court jester with a deeply hurt avenging angel in his backstory—a mother (played brilliantly by Jessica Lange in ghost form) as a woman with zero cultural visibility or entrance into New York society—presumedly because of her awkward Southern ways. So there’s that engine to drive his inner conflict.
On the other hand, you also had this circle of pristine midlife women all of whom lunched at the center table of Le Cote Basque and leveraged Capote as this high-flying member of New York’s intelligentsia to maintain their own cultural significance and relevance in the press—until it backfired on them.
As
pointed out in her stellar piece over the weekend, any reporter hearing such dishy goss from such rarified women would have surely seen dollar signs in all their gems and sold multiple blind items and whatnot to keep the wolf at bay. So, were the Swans truly so naive as to think he wouldn’t use the material somehow? And is their theater of outrage somehow part of keeping their stories from fading into bland, Waspy irrelevance?’s Monday Morning Memo in on midlife women’s cultural visibility and taking up the center space, reminded me of how we can better challenge ourselves to do more of that, to gather ourselves, to dress up, to go out and take the center table and not be relegated off to the side.We’ve gotten out of the habit of doing it with the Pandemic. As you get into midlife, more often than not, it’s something that has to be orchestrated, ritualized, and sometimes demanded. I was out at a dinner in Williamsburg with our commercial crew and we were all over the age of 40. Somehow we were shuffled off to the VERY, VERY back and seated with all the oldsters who were easily 60+, which was fine. Still, it was disarming to see such blatant ageism in public because the younger diners were very clearly seated front and center and it made me want to say… “Hey, don’t do that! We’re filmmakers, here!”
But what about you? When was the last time you felt culturally visible as a midlife woman?
On the flip side, can you list all the times you’ve felt erased? What could you have done to disrupt that feeling? Or was it even worth it? Sometimes, it can feel better to let it go. The question then becomes how can we be more intentional about those times, so that when we DO speak up—it counts.
Well, save the date below because we are going to get super intentional about what it means to thrive as a woman in midlife! Part of that is unlearning certain limiting narratives, aligning our life plans with our business plans, and getting laser-focused on how to get things done. So to that end, we’re hosting our first virtual salon and panel discussion… on Leap Day.
We know the hours might be a bit late for those on the East Coast, but we’re so hoping you’ll join us. Registration begins Wednesday. It’s free. We will record the session for paying subscribers to access at a later date.
More coming soon!
Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
By the way, as a disclaimer, I am not a therapist or a physician. I’ve only been to the medical school of me so please take all of the above as mere musings and not at all legit medical advice.
When was the last time I felt culturally visible etc? well, I have three daughters and they love my clothes from NYC 90s. They covet them. They borrow and steal them. So, that's kind of neat! They don't think I'm invisible. And, they are def not invisible. They are 19-22 and all that and a little bit more. I am so glad to hand them my "seen" mantle and sit back and watch the world. There are some advantages to getting this time without eyes on me. What was my point...Oh, being seen. I write this blog and I love when I walk down the street and someone unexpectedly wants to talk about as aspect of my posts. Or, that they got psyched to go do something because they see other people are and they didn't die trying. that's the whole point and I love this kind of being seen.
Looking forward to the event, Alisa! And have you watched "The Capote Tapes"? It's on Hulu. A good pairing with "Feud". I don't know about being irrelevant due to age. I think that certainly happens in the entertainment industry to a point, maybe a few other ridiculous industries as well. I think we determine our relevance. We don't need anyone's approval/permission. And we've gotten pretty good at creating our own opportunities. We're GenX, after all. We raised ourselves and were born with a minimal amount of fux to give. We grew up without helmets or knee pads or even seatbelts, riding Big Wheels that sat below a car's sightline. What do we have to fear? xo