Someone's in the wrong place. 😂 👑 ✨

✨ They tried to ban us. But your words—funny, fierce, and female—were too powerful to silence. ✨ And yes, there IS a point...

✨ A vibrant space for midlife women, The Empress now reaches over two million readers through our networks of networks. ✨ From bestselling author Alisa Kennedy Jones. ✨ If you enjoy content about midlife, humor, and agency, I’d love to welcome you as part of our community. ✨ For only $50/year ($4.17 a month!) or $5/month, you’ll gain access to all my articles, Monday columns, book clubs, and virtual events.

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No. No. Nope.

What do you mean…?

Her voice cracked with perplexity.

“They banned us, and now… they’re our second biggest customer.”

Our twin gasps hovered like a fog bank over Boston Harbor. Then we started to laugh the kind of laugh you laugh when midlife has taught you to expect everything and be surprised by nothing.

Four weeks out from the book launch and everything is—how do I say this in publishing terms?—kookadoo. Of course, we have a wishlist. People we adore, brands that spark midlife joie de quirk, and asks so lofty they should have come with supplemental oxygen. Naturally, we put it all into a PowerPoint—because how else does one dream in business-speak?

So, of course, I am running around in my ‘little-lady-in-publishing’ dress saying, please believe in us because we completely believe in you!

And speaking of dreams: this is not me.

This is laura reilly of Magasin, who gave me the idea for the dress. Because a really good dress is the first step to world domination. And by world, I mean publishing. Which is very small and very weird and also the world.

So, there I was, toggling between BookScan and hormone tracking apps when I opened Claire’s sales report and saw it: We’d gone from banned to bestselling—by the very same distributor. I did a little gasp. A little jig. My heart fluttered. And for once, it wasn’t menopause—it was magic.

Let’s rewind.

Three months ago, we were told our book Quickies: One Hundred Little Lessons for Living Sexily Ever After in Midlife by Dr. Heather Bartos had been labeled “pornographic.” (Insert blinking cursor of disbelief.)

Yes. Because nothing says erotica like a menopause specialist with a Reiki certification cracking jokes about lube and liberation. We appealed. We waited. We were ghosted. So, we found another distributor—one who didn’t think pleasure, pelvic floors, or personal agency were obscene.

And then—your practical magic (pragmagic) worked!

Thanks to your letters, your requests, and your unrelenting demand for real stories about our bodies—the very distributor that banned us had to start ordering from us.

So here we are. In heels. In a dress. Building the thing we said we would when we first sat down with the brilliant Kirsten Miller:

We have to hire each other.

And we are. We’ve made jobs for midlife women. Created IP. Built bridges. Formed fellowships. And now we’re doing something even wilder—we’re claiming our seat in the AI landscape before someone else programs us out of it.

Because what happens if we don’t?

If the next generation of AI gets built on data that erases us, women over 40 won’t even be in the training sets. That means we don’t get to author the future. We get narrated—by someone else. Probably a dude wearing cargo shorts (with AI coding for him).

I mean, look at these guys… They look like they are about to eat Coraline. Do you want them to own your voice?

Image Credit: OpenAI

So here’s the plan:

We build the first AI-native and protected storytelling empire designed by and for midlife women. We train the models with our words. Our wisdom. Our friction. We turn each book into a living, learning, speaking cultural object. Think: Drew Barrymore meets OpenAI meets the Met Gala, with slightly more serotonin.

This isn’t a press.

It’s a matriarchal unicorn.

And when it scales? It gives back—to housing, to telehealth, to flash kits for menopause care in under-resourced communities. Because if we’re going to build wealth, we’re going to make it wise.

So if you’re wondering where to start your midlife reinvention?

Might I suggest a killer dress and a well-placed “yes.”

Say yes. Say yes to building. To backing. To being counted.

Because you’re not just a reader. You’re the revolution.

We’ve got some winners…

For the book The Longevity Formula giveaway! We’ll announce them in this weekend’s Empress Questionnaire!

Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,

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p.s. If you are so inclined, follow us on IG for flash content & upcoming giveaways. We’re at @the.empress.age and we’d love to see you there!

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