Earlier today – yes, it was very early, the gift of age – I read about a woman who published a book in 1923 called Black Oxen. Her name was Gertrude Atherton. Why is this significant today of all days? Because of the subject it deals with and the fact that she was 65 when she wrote it – today is my 65th birthday.
The subject she tackles? The fury of being erased, dismissed, rendered invisible because we age. Her novel insisted that women don’t disappear, that our sexuality doesn’t vanish, our desires don’t expire and our power doesn’t politely pack up and leave because our bodies change.
She proposed that older women should refuse invisibility, reclaim their power, their sexuality and their right to be desired. If they did, everything would change.
Can you imagine?
This was written over 100 years ago and women my age are still battling to find this power. Today we have the benefit of HRT and vaginal oestrogen (game changer, people, gamechanger!), we have more open conversations about menopause, and we even have TikTok teaching us pelvic floor exercises between dance trends. Progress, of sorts.
And yet…
Somewhere between “you look good for your age” (which is not the compliment people think it is) and being called “ma’am” by someone who looks like they were born last Tuesday, many women quietly start to shrink. We edit ourselves. We tone it down. We swap sexy for sensible, bold for beige, pleasure for practicality.
It’s subtle. It’s socially encouraged. And it’s entirely unnecessary.
Because here’s the truth no one told us loudly enough: sensuality in your 60s isn’t a watered-down version of your 30s. It’s a completely different, often far superior experience.
At 25, you’re performing. At 65, you’re curating.
You know what you like. You know what you don’t. You’re less interested in impressing anyone and far more interested in enjoying yourself. That alone is wildly attractive. Confidence, it turns out, is far sexier than collagen.
Being sensual on your own terms doesn’t mean squeezing yourself into a version of youth that no longer fits. It means redefining what feels good now. That could be rediscovering your body without apology, investing in your pleasure (yes, that includes those “battery-operated confidence boosters”), or simply allowing yourself to feel desire without guilt or embarrassment.
It also means broadening the definition of pleasure beyond the bedroom. Pleasure is a long lunch with friends where nobody checks the time. It’s wearing the good linen on a Tuesday. It’s booking the trip, buying the lipstick, taking up space in a room without asking permission. It’s saying, “No thank you,” and meaning it.
And let’s talk about judgement for a moment.
Society is remarkably uncomfortable with older women who are visibly enjoying themselves. We’re expected to be wise, yes. Warm, absolutely. But sexy? Sensual? Joyfully self-indulgent? That seems to make people shift in their seats.
Good. Let them shift.
Because the alternative is far worse – a life lived in quiet retreat, waiting to be deemed irrelevant.
Atherton was right. Refusing invisibility is an act of rebellion. And perhaps that’s the real secret to ageing well: not anti-ageing creams or punishing gym routines, but a refusal to disappear.
So here I am, 65 today, not fading gently into the background but stepping quite deliberately into the foreground – with a sense of humour, a strong opinion about good coffee, and a firm belief that pleasure (sexual and otherwise) is not a privilege of youth but a lifelong right.
If anything, we’ve earned it.
And frankly, we’re just getting started.
