Older women don’t care what you think about them. I know. I’ve become an older woman. It’s a heady kind of liberation from the shackles of giving a F about approval, or not trying not to upset people. Some days I actually think I am in the business of upsetting people. Or at least upsetting blokes who don’t like me harping on about their privilege, and the fact that the heavy lifting they need to do isn’t a stack of timber from the back of the ute, but the cultural change needed to stop men killing women. Awkward? I don’t care.
You see, like a lot of women, I’ve finally reached this magical place where I feel good about myself. Where I don’t criticise my body, or hate on my ample arse. I wear what I like. I don’t really bother with what’s appropriate. I love being inappropriate. I have stopped caring about stuff that doesn’t matter. All that unnecessary brain clog that stops your focusing on things that actually DO matter. Like will my kids actually have a liveable planet? So many more important things to worry about.
And Facebook – your algorithms can F-off. Stop age shaming me with your inane ads for red light therapy for my sagging jowls or some stupid lymph-draining brush that is going to make my face look ‘snatched’. I don’t want a snatched face. I don’t even know what snatched is. I thought it was when someone stole your purse.
Facebook has been prowling through my photos like a creepy cyber stalker, and Zuckerberg thought, ‘Wow, Nolan is looking jowly – send her endless reels about women who have gone down the red light therapy rabbit hole’.
I don’t worry about any of that stuff anymore. That feeling of not measuring up as a younger woman is gone. That worry about not making my own organic preservative-free baby food, or having cellulite-free thighs, or having clever violin-playing kids with soccer trophies to boast about, or worrying if I should be injecting botox, or some other hideous poison, and if I’m puffy and bloated and have jowls can I have friends over to a messy house and still be considered a reasonable human? Yes. I don’t care anymore. Not about that meaningless shite.
But I still care about other stuff. Probably more. Because now I’ve stopped focusing on me, I have more bandwidth for the important stuff. I care about what matters. I care that stupid governments, full of stupid politicians, make stupid decisions in the interests of their stupid mates, with too much stupid money, who want to make more stupid money, and we end up with really stupid outcomes. Like the stupidity of opening more coal mines in a climate crisis. Like the stupidity of not taking action in a genocide. Like too many super-rich people with empty homes. And lots of really poor people with no homes. Kids growing up with no bedroom. Kids who feel their lives don’t matter. Then those same super-rich people donating to a children’s charity at a fancy lunch and not getting that the system that made them rich is the problem. THEY are the problem.
That’s stupid. I care about that.
Civil rights expert and Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, John A Powell, put forward a simple, revolutionary solution – reversing the stupid way society currently works, where we go ‘hard on people and soft on systems’ and instead, doing something smart and caring – going ‘soft on people and hard on systems’.
That’s the only care package I’m interested in.
The Echo’s coverage of political issues will remain as comprehensive and fair as it has ever been, outside this opinion column which, as always, contains Mandy’s personal opinions only.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
