Every Woman Over 40 At The Pool

Welcome to the MID view of The White Lotus.

The three 'midlife' friends in the latest season of the prestige TV show are a perfect thin-slice of the new forty-somethings. These are not your mother's foreheads. And this is not your mother's resortwear.

But when Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie ventured away from the beautiful people inside their five-star bubble, they ran perfect-face-first into an uncomfortable truth that's deeply relatable, even if we don't want to admit it to ourselves.

This special drop is inspired by a story by Holly Wainwright on Mamamia

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CREDITS:

Host: Holly Wainwright

Executive Producer: Naima Brown

Producer: Tahli Blackman

Audio Producer: Jacob Round

Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma Mere acknowledges the
traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is
recorded on. Hello, I'm Holly Wayne Wright, and I am
mid conversations for gen X women who are anything but
welcome to our show. This is a special drop. We
said to you at the beginning of season four that

(00:31):
we were going to be doing some little drops in
the feed of conversations, maybe essays. I've written things that
we just wanted to talk about because they're playing on
our minds as mid women of various kinds. And I
did one about Baby Girl. Scroll back and listen. If
you've only recently seen that movie, the one with Nicole
Kidman where she has a very it's not hot. I

(00:52):
wouldn't say I don't think the sex in that movie
is meant to be hot. It's a very provocative and
interesting view of mid life sexuality, and Kidman's amazing in it. Anyway,
I did one about that, and today I couldn't stop
thinking about the three friends in The White Lotus. Now,
you might not be watching The White Lotus. It is

(01:12):
one of those shows that everybody thinks you should be
watching and tells you that you should be watching, and
sometimes I really resist those kind of shows, prestige TV
as it's called. But whether you're watching it or not,
you're going to recognize this story I'm about to tell
you because the three friends in that show are some
of the many representations of midwomen that we're seeing on

(01:33):
TV at the moment. They're all in their forties, they've
been friends for a long time. The dynamic between them
is fascinating, from their sort of passive, aggressive, endless compliments
to each other, you look amazing, you look amazing, well
also whispering a little bit behind each other's back about
how they seem to actually know very little about each other,
from their politics to their surgery choices. It's a really

(01:54):
interesting dynamic and a really interesting representation of friendship at
this stage of life. Anyway, there is a scene in
the most recent episode that I can't stop thinking about,
and whether you've seen it or not, I think you're
going to know what I'm talking about. So here I'm
going to read you a piece that I wrote for
Mamma Mia about that White Lotus Paul scene. There's a

(02:19):
moment in every woman's life when she catches sight of
herself through other people's eyes, and it's a jolt. That
moment happened to Jacqueline Lemon in episode four of The
White Lotus, and oh was this scene a rich text.
If you're not watching The White Lotus and not everyone is,
of course, let me sketch you a quick outline. Among

(02:42):
the groups of characters who've checked into a luxurious Thailand
hotel are three longtime girlfriends, Jacqueline, who lives in Hollywood
and is on TV, Kate, who lives in Austin, Texas
and is married to a rich man, and Laurie, who
lives in New York and has a corporate job. Jacqueline
is paying for everyone, and Kate's husband thinks that this

(03:02):
is a midlife crisis trip. It's not specified how old
these three school friends are exactly, but let's land at
later mid forties, and my, these are some stunning, groomed, toned,
plumped and smoothed mid forties friends. Even Lourie, who can't
relate to Jacqueline and Kate's who's your doctor tweakment talk

(03:25):
is slim, shiny and stylish. There's a whole other conversation
to be had about being the lorry and a friend
group of Jacquelines and Kates who will tell you that
you look amazing while hinting at your bravery and relatability.
But we'll get to that another day. The creator of
the White Lotus, Mike White, has captured a perfect, thin
slice in these characters. This is what the new forties

(03:48):
looks like, and it's nothing like the old forties, nothing
like middle age aspirationally still hot. These are not your
mother's foreheads, and this is not your mother's resort were still.
When Jacqueline asks their young hotel butler if he can
direct them to a vibey place for cocktails, she runs
perfect face first into the realation that even Hollywood forty

(04:11):
something is not in fact twenty something. This brings us
to the pool. Jacqueline, whose confidence is already shaky because
her younger actor husband has been mysteriously hard to reach
while she's been away, realizes that the other people at
this supposedly vibey cocktail spot are old, like proper old,

(04:32):
not in numbers, although there's a doubtless higher than hers,
but in body, in face, in vibe. First, she notices
the women their kaftans and playsuits might be the same
swirling camillary prints as hers, but the skin inside them
is creepy. Under arms wobble bulges peek out from underswimsuit straps.

(04:53):
Their chins are soft, their jawlins loose. There's gray hair wrinkles.
Then she sees the men weathered, untoned, white haired, sleazy.
If my words are harsh, so is the camera, because
we're seeing these people through Jacqueline's eyes. Aging, visible physical
aging is her worst nightmare. It's something she spends copious

(05:17):
amounts of money and time avoiding these people. Real people
are not who she's prepared to drink with. Being thrown
into a sea of bargain basement retirees is a literal
horror story for her. But then the realization, the jolt
of recognition. The hot butler sent them here. He thought

(05:38):
they'd fit in, he thought they'd enjoy it. He thought
they belonged as glamorous and lineless as Jacqueline, Kate, and
Lourie may be through the eyes of a man in
his twenties, they're in the same broad bucket as these
ordinary mortals. Over forty equals old. This is the moment
of uncomfortable truth for all of us. At some point

(06:01):
the moment we confront our own age and our own ageism.
I have an ugly memory of being in a taxiq
many years ago, somewhere in all Sydney, late at night.
An obnoxious drunk man was going down the line, pointing
at the women and guessing their ages. I have no
idea why, and let's not waste any brain cells on that,
but I imagine he was aiming to humiliate us in that

(06:22):
super adorable way that drunk men sometimes do. Eighteen, he'd say,
leering at a young woman who'd rather be anywhere else.
Twenty six, twenty one, he came to me and he
tried to focus on my face for a long, beery
smelling moment. I, like every other woman in that queue,
looked at the ground, silently willing him away. Thirty five,

(06:45):
he shouted, thirty five too old to be out? Listener.
I was thirty five, and I was mortified as the
men in the queue giggled because I didn't think I
looked thirty five, and I didn't think I was too
old to be out. But this man saw me and
my age. He saw through me. Even a decree had

(07:08):
been delivered, and because of hundreds or thousands of years
of conditioning. This drunk man's opinion of me felt like
it had validity. Wait, and my age was an embarrassment. Now,
of course I believe thirty five year olds to be babies,
certainly still permitted to be out drinking cocktails and getting
cabs home. And I believe smoothed face Jacqueline to be

(07:29):
a baby too. But she just got age shamed by
someone she thought understood who she was and who she
was and is is not an old person. This isn't me,
she's thinking, not yet, it's not, nor will it be.
Don't put me there with these people who are closer
to their end than their beginning, and who look like

(07:50):
it too. Don't put me here with a window seat
to the next act, too close to facing the very
thing that I'm fighting that I've convinced myself will never
happen if I just try hard enough to resist it, pay, pray,
work at it. We and when I say we, I
mean the culture broadly say all the right words about

(08:10):
embracing aging and the beauty of a lived in face,
and how lines tell stories, and that there's a welcome
softening to a wise older woman. But do we believe
them when we're facing the reality ourselves that it's our
faces and our bodies that are going to be the
horror story to the hot young butler. What Jacqueline is
thinking as she's running away, screaming as she grabs her purse,

(08:34):
ditches her drink, and ushers her friends away from the
visibly aged as if they were in infection she might catch,
is they're not like us. We will never be them.
I am alive, I am still young. And to the
man whose eyes saw her age before her beauty, she's saying,
how dare you call me old? Even without words, it's

(08:55):
still the very worst thing that any woman can be.
Thank you for listening to our little drop about the
white Loaders. Tell us what you thought. Listen to mid
Braden review. We'll see you next time.