At 54 I’ve become invisible to men – I love it ...Middle East

Not long ago, I was walking through London. It was a sunny day, I was wearing a vintage summer dress and red shoes with straps, and I was heading to a meeting – so I had applied make-up. My stroll reminded me of a time way back in the late 1990s, when I worked near Oxford Street. But there was one big difference.

Then, I was in my twenties, averagely attractive, and every few minutes, a man would glance at me. They might smile, flirt briefly, comment on my outfit or tell me to cheer up because it might never happen.

This time, at 54, I didn’t attract one single look. I might as well have been wearing a puffa coat and moon-boots, and it was…marvellous.

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I know that many women mourn the feeling of invisibility that can come as we get older. A recent poll by the clothes label Klass found that 44 per cent of women have struggled with ‘feelings of being overlooked and unacknowledged’, while one study found, rather shockingly, that women start to feel ‘invisible’, both socially and at work, at just 36.

“I call it Vanishing Grief,” says solution-focused hypnotherapist Dipti Tait. “It’s the slow erosion of something we didn’t consciously realise we had until it starts to disappear – visibility.” It’s often a strange mix, says Dipti, “of grief and relief.”

For others, the awareness of no longer being a sexually attractive being (to strangers, at least), is a painful loss, particularly because many women have learned to validate ourselves based entirely on how youthful and attractive we look. “It also stretches beyond that,’ adds Dipti. “Shops market to us as if we’re ancient, TV storylines forget we have sex drives, dreams and identities outside of being mums or grandmothers.”

Of course, feeling ignored by society at large is not the same as breathing a sigh of relief that the man with a face like an abandoned kebab is no longer eyeing you up. Toxic ageism is rife in our culture. On a sexual level, however, saying goodbye to being fancied can mean shedding years of conditioning to please a random stranger before you please yourself.

Dipti points out that it is not anti-feminist to mourn attention: ‘Our brains are wired for recognition and reward. That constant feedback loop of being seen as desirable triggers oxytocin, dopamine, even adrenaline – all released through the lens of connection and approval.’

But me? I love being invisible.

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It is liberating to no longer face judgment from strangers, and no more be wondering if I’m attractive enough, thin enough or cheerful enough to win a competition I didn’t know I’d entered.

I’m no longer in the competition and for me, it’s both joyful and freeing to walk around unnoticed, like the menopausal middle-aged woman I am. I know several women over 50 who feel the same.

Witness the rebirth of Pamela Anderson, once every lad’s pin-up. She’s now 58, she’s chopped off her flowing blonde hair and no longer wears make-up, and she’s enjoying a glorious career renaissance and reported new love with Liam Neeson.

Other talented older women have turned their backs on the anti-ageing industry too, aware that chasing the fumes of youth offers swiftly-vanishing returns. Alicia Silverstone won’t have botox, Andi McDowell has gone grey rather than dye her hair and Emma Thompson revealed her normal, sixty-something body in full in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Women who are at ease with their age are far more inspiring to me than Madonna, with her risque photoshoots and balloon-shiny face of fillers – albeit maybe she likes looking that way.

Embracing our new ‘invisibility’ can be a liberation, says Dipti. ‘Many women feel a sense of relief. They can walk through the world without flinching under the gaze of judgment or comparison.’

Indeed, I love being treated like any other human. Nobody’s looking down my top, or offering to carry my bags with a wink, or otherwise treating me as though my sole purpose is to delight and arouse men. As a bright young woman, with a successful career, I loathed the instant belittling that came with it, and the fact that I had to get past being ‘small and cute’ before anyone would take me seriously. I never experience that now, and the relief is vast, even though I sometimes miss my youthful skin and reasonably slim thighs.

Without regular external validation, self-doubt can creep in, but trust me, there is a happy land of confidence on the other side of ‘young and hot.’

“Losing so-called sexual power creates space for a deeper, more grounded power to emerge,” says Dipti. “The kind that comes from experience and inner authority.” What replaces the approving male gaze as we age, she says, is the approving self-gaze – “and that is a far more sustainable source of power.”

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