I don't believe any midlife woman who says they don't care what they look like

Telegraph

4 days ago

Are you a member of the We Do Not Care Club? It's an online sensation started by Melani Sanders, a 45-year-old mother of three from West Palm Beach, Florida, who invites midlife women to tell her what they no longer care about. From her bed, clad in an old, grey T-shirt and baseball cap, she rants about how she doesn't care about bras – 'bras suffocate us'. She doesn't care 'about looking pregnant when we're not pregnant – that's just our perimenopausal or menopausal bodies '.
She doesn't care 'about being late, cos we have our own s--- to do'; or having unpainted toe nails – 'I'm going to wear my flip-flops, they are just my feet'.
She doesn't care 'if you think I have a s--- attitude, or that I'd rather watch TikTok than clear up'. If she has chin hairs, or ' cellulite in short shorts, that's just how I look, God made me that way'.
I have to say I love her attitude – in 2025, it still feels revolutionary to see a woman out and proud, blowing up so many social 'shoulds'. I particularly love that she is taking aim at the kind of dreary, midlife grooming which is expensive, painful and endless. You know what I mean: threading, waxing and toe maintenance that can easily become a full-time job for what the ghastly Gregg Wallace has described as 'women of a certain age'.
But while I appreciate Sanders's brand of We Do Not Care sentiments, I'm afraid her credo is not actually what I see in my community of midlife women. The reality of life for my 'Queenagers' (my word, I thought we needed a more positive rebrand), is many of them buckling under a myriad number of 'cares'.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Melani Sanders (@justbeingmelani)
My women are holding up the sky. Last week, one woman in our sharing circle talked about how she is only getting three hours of sleep a night and is worrying about burning out because she is single, looking after her mother with dementia, working full-time AND supporting her two sons.
The boys are in their early 20s and are working for free as interns in London to try and get jobs in finance. Their mum is paying their rent to help them get on that first rung on the corporate ladder (AI has reduced the number of entry level graduate jobs available by 40 per cent, so competition is ferocious).
I said maybe she should let them fend for themselves – but, like many parents, she is committed to helping them get launched in the world. And that is getting harder and harder, because this is a boomerang generation. Unsurprisingly, the poor lady looked close to collapse, and then she admitted she is worried about losing her own job. 'It's amazing how all the women get whacked as they hit 50,' she said.
Redundancy is a massive midlife female 'care'. In the last week, I have been supporting five senior women with ostensibly amazing careers who have just been 'let go'. Their crime? To be over 50 in a world where gendered-ageism is real. It's not just the workplace where men have a whole life, and women a shelf life. Research conducted by my company noon.org.uk found that, by 50, over half of women have been through at least five of the following: divorce, bereavement, redundancy, caring for elderly parents, or a Gen Z with an anxiety or mental health disorder (not to mention their own health issues, menopause, and other kinds of abuse).
The midlife clusterf--- (as we call it). Add to that, the constant bombardment we women face from anti-ageing messages in our youth-obsessed culture, where freakishly young-looking female celebrities, from Nicole Kidman to Kris Jenner, are held up to us as exemplars of how we are supposed to look.
And most of us can't just disappear into a We Do Not Care slob zone of stretchy tracksuit bottoms and witch hair chins, if we want to hang on to our already precarious places in the world. OK, if we work from home, we can slob around in work-out gear – but for most midlife women, it's just not as easy as saying We Do Not Care.
We're told every day that our value is wrapped up in how we look. I'm all for throwing off the patriarchal programming, which values women primarily for being foxy and fecund. But I see so many women of my generation battling that conditioning. They're facing an internal war between their desire to move into a new phase of autonomy – letting it all hang out and putting their needs first – then oscillating back into caring very much indeed about their dependents, and how they keep their peckers up in the world.
Why else is practically every woman I meet dosing themselves with Mounjaro? The tyranny to remain slim and sexy, and lose the dreaded 'meno belly' feels real. And it is depressingly omnipresent. Last month, for instance, I attended a launch at the House of Commons for a new campaign called What Women Want. It's supposed to be about ending violence against women, erasing the gender pay gap – all the big stuff. Ahead of it, Good Housekeeping magazine did a survey of its (mainly midlife) female readers asking them that very question: 'What do you want?' The top answer? 'To lose half a stone.' I told you: They Do Care.
So while I love the devil may 'do not' care attitude to chin hairs and brassieres, clearing up after messy relatives and not pedicuring horny 50-something feet, this isn't the reality. We live in a culture where gendered ageism is alive and kicking, the pressures on midlife women are off the scale but nonetheless, we've got to stay in the game, because we don't get our pensions until we are 67 (and women retire with 35 per cent less in the pot than men).
I'm afraid We Do Care because we HAVE to care. For now, Ms Sanders's vision is just a fantasy of what the world might be like if we valued older women for all that they are, not just their attempts to stay young. I applaud her mission, but I'm afraid it's not reality for most of yet. We'll know we really don't care when young women look forward to being middle aged, as the time when it all gets good – not dread every wrinkle as an impending sign of doom.