The midlife crisis is a great leveller it seems. While I have only been shouting for yonks about how the female midlife crisis is real, feeling miserable, regretful and downright sullen, up pops a supermodel to proclaim that she is going through the midlife crisis.
Cindy Crawford who is super super famous from dominating the modelling scene from the 1990s has given an interview about suffering from the midlife crisis.
Finally, I have something in common with Cindy Crawford beyond the two arms and two legs sort of stuff.
The struggles which she lists are commonplace symptoms of the midlife crisis.
Cindy says that she is trying to find herself among the myriad of things she has on her to-do list and among the roles that she plays. In the interview, she poses the question, ‘who am I?’ Given her global status and fame, her answer is a surprising, ‘I don’t know’. She then ponders on whether the midlife crisis is driving this self-reflection. I can tell her that it is.
She has hired a coach to see her through this phase. Gawd, how I envy her for being able to afford to do this. I don’t envy her for her millions, the fact that she is still able to get away with wearing skimpy outfits at the age of 50 something or that she has a best friend type relationship with the dishy George Clooney.
Ah ah. I am jealous that she has an expert guiding her through a very confusing and higgledy-piggledy phase in life.
Oh the luxury of having someone listen to all one’s moans, groans and weeping. It must be like having God on your right shoulder the whole time going, ‘there there’.
I did hire a coach in 2021 for six sessions to see me through becoming an empty nester. I couldn’t afford more sessions. These confidence/coaching sessions are bloody expensive for ornery folk like me. My wonderful coach once spent half a session making empathetic sounds while I sobbed and sobbed.
My face didn’t look so much a river of tears but more resembled a field with monsoon rainwater fast flowing through it. I realised that I had to quickly pull myself together to get the best out of the other half of the session. Paying £55 to cry in front of someone, no matter how lovely they were, wasn’t going to see me through the next fortnight to the next session.
I console myself with the thought that while I may not be able to afford a listening ear on an ongoing basis to help me unearth answers to existential questions such as, ‘who the hell am I?’, ‘why the hell do I self sabotage?’ and ‘when will I stop regretting that one big purchase in 2019 which I am still paying for’, I still have something in common with a supermodel.
Yup, sometimes trivial existentialism is the cheap and easy answer.
P/S Posting a photo of myself instead from a photoshoot because there are no free stock photos of Cindy Crawford available. In any case, I think I personify the real struggles of common female folk more than she does.
