Happy 40th, Hugo.

I turned 40 last year, and have experienced the opposite of what you describe in your post. After a long period of sexual latency — I had two children and raised them to elementary age, with all of the backbreaking work and self-sacrifice that implies — I hit 40 with all the baby weight gone, and then some, and a sense of ferocious sexuality that is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.

I am, I suppose, middle-aged. And I am sexy. It is not something I am trying to be, nor is it my attempt to hold on to validation from others in the face of my disappearing youth. My “aging and changing” body is better than it ever was at 25. In spite of the fact that popular culture tells me that my face can’t possibly be as attractive as it was at 18, I look in the mirror and it tells me something else. I see it in the gaze of others, too.

My sexuality is not predatory, but bright, open, self-assured, joyous. I’ve never received as much good male attention (not the street stuff aimed at tearing me down; for those purposes, I’m practically invisible) as I have in the past couple of years. From men my own age, and from men much younger than I am. My age has made no difference to them.

I suppose I’m saying all of this because this has also been the experience of other women I know. Childbearing and intensive rearing is over for some of us, and a surprising “it” has returned to us — and it’s a gift. Perhaps many men experience 40 as the closing of a door. I’ve experienced it as a door being flung wide open.

I’m glad that you’re so excited and optimistic about your 40th. For women, this is often a more dreaded milestone, wrapped up in biological (fertility), cosmetic (wrinkles), and various other concerns. No matter how much women persuade themselves that aging is a natural, beautiful process, we can’t extricate ourselves from a culture that tells us to “defy” age (despite Dove’s only thinly veiled “pro-age” PR gig) and extend the “unending potential” that the young female body promises far beyond its otherwise natural reach (Botox, Clomid … need I say more?).

Can’t offer much advice on aging (I’m in my twenties), but my parents (mid-sixties) tell me that feelings of basic sanity and contentedness get stronger through your forties and fifties. :)

I like the “aura of authority” that comes with turning forty, even as I shake my head at the folks that seem wrapped up in the stereotypes Treifalicious mentions about what certain ages are supposed to look like or feel like. I know that “authority” is just another stereotype on age, but I experience that as a welcome positive, after hearing a sea of negatives surrounding this age.

And I still come back to that Chrissie Hynde interview in CREEM magazine, after “Brass in Pocket” came out, when the interviewer alluded to her age (then, 28) as possibly being a little old for a woman in rock and roll. She replied that if she was going to lie about her age, she’d add years instead, so folks would be more impressed she was still rockin’. That made an impression on me as a kid, and I never forgot that line—it was an interesting way to deflect the criticism one can get from being “too old” or “too old for a woman” to break the rules. ‘Cuz the fact is, if you live long enough, you’re going to be breaking plenty of “rules”.

May you have many more years to break many more rules, brother.