Somewhere in midlife, many women discover they’ve become invisible. It turns out that’s not entirely a bad thing.
If you are a woman somewhere in midlife, you may have noticed something curious.
We have become invisible.
This was not a dramatic “wrap the cloak of invisibility around you and poof, you’re gone!” kind of vanishing. I’m referring to a much more insidious, gradual, drip-campaign sort of situation.
If you are my peer—a woman in early to late middle age—and you work hard to look attractive with fashionable clothes, tasteful makeup, and maybe even keeping up with TikTok trends, this may not be happening to you. You all look amazing, and it’s great that you keep yourself looking fresh and relevant.
But what about those of us who, with age and experience, come to realize that spending time and money on your outer self can start to feel like a losing proposition?
One day you wake up and think, “Why put on makeup? I’m only staying around the house today.”
Next it’s, “Why put on makeup? I’m only running some errands.”
Followed by, “Why put on makeup? I’m only meeting some old friends for lunch.”
Until finally you realize your makeup expiration date was sometime two or three presidential administrations ago.
How did that happen?
If you’re like me, your eyesight has gotten so sketchy that you can’t really see your image in the mirror any longer—and frankly, that poor vision is actually something of a boon.
And clothes? If you are going to be invisible, what does it matter if you’ve got cute booties on with your jeans, or Uggs, which are warmer and have better traction in the bad weather?
Do you know who is noticing what you are wearing?
No one.
Because you’ve become invisible.
That thought used to irk me.
“I used to be someone people looked at admiringly,” I think to myself, even though I was never exactly a fashion plate or makeup queen. And now I glide through the world like a ghost, with no one paying the least bit of attention to me.
But lately I’ve started to think of this state of being as a small miracle.
Remember when you used to drive carpool and the kids spoke freely to one another and their friends because you were essentially invisible? They’d chatter away, forgetting you were there.
There was power in that. You got to pick up bits and pieces of conversations you would never have been privy to if they had remembered you were listening.
It’s the same now in middle life. The same superpower.
You can hear and observe without being noticed. You’re not a threat—you’re a lamppost, not to be seen unless someone inadvertently walks into you.
And there is real opportunity in being consistently underestimated by the general population.
Youth teaches you how to be seen.
Age teaches you how to see.
And once you realize that the world has stopped watching you quite so closely, you begin to understand something remarkable: invisibility isn’t a loss of power.
It’s a different kind of power altogether.
One that lets you move quietly through the world, observing, listening, and choosing your moments carefully.
Turns out the invisible woman sees everything.
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