Last week, some of my high school friends got together*

Tara Parker—at 17, she was already fabulous (smart and funny, inventive and ambitious). At 50, she’s more fabulous still.

to celebrate our brilliant friend Tara Parker—the last of us to turn 50.

Tara is a highly sought-after entertainment lawyer (the rest of us are writers and/or actors), and there was much ribbing about how we were lucky to get so much of a lawyer’s time. So what did we do with it? We talked about how great it is to be 50! Of course.

Here’s a reprise of a piece I wrote in 2019, for my own 50th. I think it’s holding up…and so far, so am I.

*Covid safety disclaimer—yes, it was on Zoom

Today, I turn 50.

The number is astonishing to me, as it probably is to everyone who reaches it. I have been very lucky to have a healthy life and now a relatively long one. There are things I have accomplished and am very proud of. There are also things that I am dissatisfied with, and projects I wish were on my list of accomplishments that are still on my to-do list.

But I wanted to mark the occasion by acknowledging the number. Fifty. 50!

Because even among many of the strong, feminist women whose company I am very grateful to keep, there remains a stigma about age and aging. It exists within me as well, of course. But I am pushing back against it. Not the age. The stigma.

So many women worry that as we age, we will become invisible. We will become less sought-after for work, for commentary, for leadership and participation.

Now, I understand that this situation is not of women’s making. That this idea is the construct of a patriarchal society that considers women useful only for their part in procreation. That once a woman is no longer attractive to men as a potential baby-maker, her mind and her voice are considered stale-dated along with her eggs—whether or not she ever had any interest in men, or in having children (or could do so).

The world we live in has definite biases about women “of a certain age,” and these biases come with consequences. The fear of aging publicly is justified. Women lose influence and earning potential as they age. The system makes sure of it.

What I’m saying is we don’t have to help it.

And every time we dismiss a woman because of her age or equate being older with irrelevance, every time we cringe at an upcoming birthday, or worry about whether we should let someone know our real age, every time we gasp at grey hair (whether it is ours or someone else’s), we are upholding a system that—now or later—will turn against us. It’s misogyny in action.

We are accepting that there is a very narrow platform of years in which a woman has perspective and license to speak, and that we must stake out our little bit of territory and cling to it as long as we might be allowed.

When instead we should be working to build a bigger platform.

Just as it is vital that feminism hold space for women of all races and classes and for trans and gay women, we also need to make more room for older women—and more room for younger women too. That way we wouldn’t have to dismiss the voices of older women as stale or the ideas of younger women as uninformed and immature, just to try to keep that precious bit of real estate. Instead, we would ensure our own relevance by asking questions and learning from each other. We could better harness our combined power. So that we could change the system as a whole.

Today, I turn 50. I’m damn lucky to do so. But I am not done yet. I have a novel to finish and more books to write, and things to learn and—should I be lucky enough to be given the time—plans to be one rocking old lady.

If you want to join me, I’ll be right here. I think there’s space for all of us.

— March 15, 2019

The Gift of 50 (reprise)