I’m not having a midlife crisis. Any actuary would tell you I’m well over halfway, plus the years 30-40 were one long, undignified, slightly premature MLC (I won’t apologise for abbreviating; time is short – see first point) that I refuse to revisit. But I’m interested in that moment when mortality ceases to be a vague, polite murmur and becomes a screaming alarm. My cohort is now traversing Dante’s dark wood, so I feel surrounded if not by midlife crises (I’m experiencing disappointingly few vicarious ones), then by culture exploring them.
Of course, each generation rediscovers and makes a fuss about universal experiences, but it feels like the MLC is in the midst of a makeover. First, it’s female. The new MLC queen is Miranda July, whose new novel All Fours is reframing perimenopausal turmoil as urgent, sensual, even “hot”. July has managed to make midlife angst feel fresh, but positing All Fours as a singular overdue examination of the crystallising, life-upturning effect of the end of fertility is a bit unfair to many who came before. What about Bridget Christie’s brilliant menopause sitcom The Change, for a start? I also think you don’t need to explicitly articulate the physical and emotional reckonings of perimenopause to create art informed by it. Rachel Cusk has been dissecting aspects of female midlife turmoil since her divorce memoir Aftermath, surely; Fleishman Is In Trouble is, in large part, a female MLC novel, and Deborah Levy’s extraordinary Living trilogy became a lodestar for a generation of women navigating the shifting sands of middle age (I solemnly gave it to my sister for her 39th birthday, as if transmitting a sacred text).
Regardless, the female midlife crisis is having a moment. The menopause/MLC intersection has been comprehensively memeified recently (at least according to my algorithm) and new online mag, Jenny, launched in January offering a buffet of compellingly messy midlife content (dating younger men, getting 10 tattoos, taking Ozempic and more). The sports car and affair with a personal trainer are out; creative flowering, new ways of living and sexual rumspringa are in. That’s welcome and yes, overdue. But there are other MLC 2024 elements that are generational and situational, not gendered.
As New York magazine explored recently (perfectly illustrated with a piece of avocado toast sitting up in a coffin), millennials are hitting their 40s and their experience is very much not your mama’s midlife. Traditionally “a midlife crisis was born out of a complacent sense of security”; now, many midlifers haven’t been able to acquire the previous generation’s signifiers of stability: home, job security, pension, possibly kids. On the contrary, they face “a distinct lack of comfort, of resources”. A midlife crisis? In this economy?
Then there are the existential challenges of life in 2024. Every day, I read at least one headline that scares me silly and I don’t need to enumerate them to any Guardian reader. Are we even going to get the lifespan we thought we could expect? When you’re living through paroxysm after paroxysm of a polycrisis, indulging in the midlife variety could feel a little surplus to requirements. Who on earth, in 2024, feels that the rest of their life is so comfortably, predictably mapped out that they’re compelled to kick against it?
That suggests the MLC might be becoming irrelevant, but actually, I think it might be becoming more radical. A generation reaching midlife without the security it was promised is questioning, even wondering how to dismantle, the systems and structures that failed to deliver. I’m not hearing about old school midlife drama from friends, but I am hearing plenty from people sick of unfulfilling and unstable work, profound inequities and inaccessible housing, childcare and healthcare. They aren’t questioning their individual life choices so much as the way these have been curtailed and threatened, the paucity of political alternatives on offer and how all of that could – and must – change.
Conventionally, midlife crises ended in a sheepish realisation of how much you could lose by setting fire to your life, a renewed appreciation for comfort, possibly a settling into caution and conservatism. At least in a world already on fire, there’s little chance of that happening.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
