You look great... for your age

And why I don't use that phrase

Nicky, Rosie and me

On Friday night, I went clubbing with Rosie and Nicky, two of my best university friends. We’ve been going out dancing together since 1997, the year we started at Birmingham University.

We know the faces we make when we dance: the pouts (Rosie) the cheeky grin (Nicky), the single-finger air point (me) the side-eye shoulder shuffle (all of us).

We know that Nicky is always ready first, I’m last (I must always add just one more layer of mascara) and there will probably be sequins involved.

Before we went out, we ate pizza and drank gin and tonics and gossiped about love, dating, relationships, kids, hormones, friendships and dancing, took selfies, made our hair big with spray, and our lips sticky with gloss.

We got ready, and we could have been a girl band: Rosie in a sequin mini and orange vest, Nicky in a long-sleeved, cropped black sequin top and slinky skirt, and me in a silver halter neck with an orange belt and dark jeans.

At the Roundhouse

Arriving at the venue, London’s Roundhouse, a vast, Victorian former train-turning shed, we headed straight for the dancefloor, vodka lemonades and coats still in hand, ready to shimmy under a mirror ball that shone like a massive moon above us.

DJ Paulette, who was on first, played Can You Feel It by The Jacksons, and we jumped up and down just as we had at our student disco night Carwash more than two decades ago.

In other words, we found ourselves dancing, in 2023, to a song released in 1980, played by a DJ born in 1966, that we’d first danced to in the late 1990s.

But this wasn’t a night of tunes at some kind of fancy-dress, nostalgia-themed one off, it was a very … ‘right now’ event put together by the DJ Annie Macmanus as part of her Before Midnight series (she kicks things off at 7pm and Friday finished at 11.45pm).

We twirled, threw our hands in the air, ran up the back stairs to the balcony to get a better view of the mirror ball and check on our coats, which I’d stashed on a chair, and drank a few more vodkas.

I feel delighted to be in my mid-40s, far more delighted than I was to be in my mid-30s

We sang along to Stevie Wonder’s As, talked to a group of Scottish men on the dancefloor and admired the effort people had put into their outfits: sparkly green trousers, a rhinestone mini dress, silver Converse trainers.

At the end of the night, I grabbed my friends and we went to say hello to Annie. Given the fangirl that I am, I’d been rehearsing what to say all night.

(I have so much to tell her: that I first heard Beyoncé's Break My Soul when she played it last year, and that led to me going to see Bey by myself in New Orleans; that I learned about the DJ and producer Honey Dijon when Annie played her song Work and then was brave enough to go to her show solo at the Southbank; that she’d helped bring joy and fun to my life in my 40s, after quite a tricky 30s.)

I settled on: “Hello, thank you for the joy you brought tonight. We’ve been dancing together since 1997!” and Annie said: “Yous look good!” And then added: “I’m not saying ‘for your age’ anymore.”

Neither am I.

That ‘for your age’ addition turns ‘you look great’ into a backhanded compliment, a kind of patronising, ageist phrase. And, sure, when I’ve seen pictures of celebrities, I’ve sometimes Googled their age, because I have been curious.

Women have it tough: if those in the public eye look ‘old,’ they have ‘let themselves go.’ But if they have tweakments and look smooth, it’s: “What has she done to her face, she used to be…” As much as I have chosen not to try those tweakments, I accept that other people might want to.

Sure, I don’t much like seeing my wrinkles in a certain light, but mostly I’m OK about how I look.

Shimmy shimmy

I feel delighted to be in my mid-40s, far more delighted than I was to be in my mid-30s, for example. Then, I struggled with not ticking life’s boxes; now I’m letting a ‘childfree’ lifestyle in. And I think we are living in an era that does have more role models of all ages.

I love that women my age and older are making life work for them in the way they want it to. I love that my mother (78) chooses to continue to work at a well-known auction house, having reinvented her career several times.

I fully expect to be earning money at that age because I know I’ll want to contribute, to be of use, and more importantly to carrying on learning, on meeting new people.

When I was 40 and on dating apps, I was tempted to shave a couple of years off my age, paranoid that men in their 30s would set their age limit at 39.

At that time, I felt like 40 was some kind of cut off, that I was approaching ‘my last fuckable day’ (if you haven’t seen the comedy sketch with Amy Schumer, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette celebrating Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ ‘last fuckable day,’ you can watch it here).

(I think there is some truth in the concern/theory/thought that men prefer to date women younger than them - but now I just don’t give a shit. I once went on a date with a guy a few years older than me and asked him what his ‘age range’ on the apps was. “I’m quite ambitious,” he said, “my cut off is 39” (I was about 39 at the time). He wouldn’t countenance dating a woman of his own age or older. Also: ‘ambitious’? Ew.)

Anyway, did I think I would ‘still’ be clubbing in my 40s? Never. Did I used to think that 46 meant ‘over the hill’? Yes. Do I care if a man is never shown my profile on a dating app because I’m ‘too old’ for him? His loss.

Am I more confident in how I look and what I wear now than I was in 1997? Hell yes. Then it was all about cleavage and heels, now it’s about trainers, no bra and a backless top.

Annie Mac is 45. DJ Paulette is 56. Beyoncé is 42. Honey Dijon is reportedly in her 50s. Rosie, Nicky, and I are in our mid-40s. We are hot, we are smart, and we are killing it in many ways.