When Eleanor Mills was made redundant on the cusp of 50, she turned misfortune into opportunity
Eleanor Mills: ‘I think the male lens quite likes seeing older women through a menopausal lens.' Photograph: Rob Wilson jnrIn March 2020, on the cusp of Covid, Londoner Eleanor Mills was made redundant from her position in a British media company. She had been a senior executive for 23 years. Now, aged 49, she was out of a job.
“We did a big piece of research at Noon,” says Mills, on video call from her London kitchen. “We found that over half of women, by the time they hit 50, have been through at least five massive life events: divorce, bereavement, redundancy, bankruptcy, some kind of mental or physical abuse, elderly parents needing care, caring for a disabled child, the empty nest, having a teenager who has an anxiety or mental health problem.
Mills writes that in Jamaica, where she has spent a lot of time, older women are referred to as “queens”. Women in midlife are finding just how liberating it is to simply let go of those two narrow categories denoting fertility and what Mills calls “f**ckability”. “But the reality was, even though they know that, they still don’t want to see us. The people making all the decisions within marketing and advertising and all the rest of it – the beauty and perfume and fashion industry – are like the military-industrial complex, but for women. It’s set up to make women spend an absolute fortune on grooming and stuff that they don’t really need, because it makes all these men money.
“You see women coming into the circles in the putty phase, in the chrysalis, going ‘Oh God, who am I, what am I?’ And the other women are supporting them and nurturing them. You can see the women who are a bit further along on the journey, or others who are coming in who are where you were a few months ago.
Womens-Health Menopause Mental-Health
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