The Best Kept Secret Blog - Take Back The M Word

I find it amusing the way marketers are tripping all over themselves to come up with a name for us. I've heard Prime Time Women, Boomer Girls, Fabulous and Forty to name just a few. My own web site talks about women 40+ and The Toronto Star's Josey Vogels and Li Robbins who write the column Adventures in Aging refer to themselves as "writers of a certain age". And in The Globe and Mail, KarenVon Hahn devoted an entire column to alternative terms for "middle-aged".

Why such a struggle to find a handle for us? Because savvy marketers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on focus groups to learn that women our age don't like being called "middle-aged".

I could have saved them the money. I found this out quickly enough in my kitchen when I was standing around with a group of friends and told them I was going to start a web-site for middle-aged women. I almost had five cups of coffee splashed in my face.

I listened to them rant as only women who are fired up can rant. And because I'm nice in a Mary Richards kind of way I made appropriately supportive gestures and murmurs.

But secretly, I've got to tell you, I don't mind the term. That's what I am - middle aged. I am 45 years old and unless someone forgot to tell me that a Canadian female's life expectancy is now 120, I'm middle-aged.

I'm finished with the stuff of youth - growing up, having kids, establishing my career. I'm not ready for the stuff of age - time to travel, sensible shoes, soft foods. I'm in the middle - children at home, aging parents, changing body.

It's the associations the word conjures up that bugs everyone. At the top of a peak after a long, long climb and it's only downhill from here.

Well, I aim to take back the word, make it a good thing, no, a great thing. Something we all aspire to be - even the men.

My name is Karen and I am a middle aged woman.