Edel Coffey: Strictly's Amanda Abbington and embracing the renaissance of middle-age

Amanda Abbington has said Strictly Come Dancing is making her 'feel like a woman again'. Picture: BBC

I was eating a chocolate-covered toffee mouse and absent-mindedly wondering if my facial hair is as noticeable to other people as it is to me, when I came across an article about Amanda Abbington, the 49-year-old actress who has been playing a blinder on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. 

Abbington said the show had made her “feel like a woman again”. What does that mean, I wondered as I popped another chocolate mouse in my mouth and read on. 

It meant, as a woman in her forties, Amanda had been feeling invisible for a while now and that Strictly had given her newfound confidence. 

“I think sometimes women my age kind of give up,” she said. “They just go, ‘I’ll settle now. I’ll settle for this’. And actually no, you have the potential to go and do anything.”

Hmm, I wondered, putting the bag of chocolate mice back in my desk drawer. Had I settled for facial hair and a chocolate-mouse paunch as an inevitability of being a woman in my forties?

It can be hard to find self-belief and confidence in your forties, hard not to lean into the comforting embrace of invisibility, hard not to think you’re past a lot of things, actually. 

Edel Coffey: It can be hard to find self-belief and confidence in your forties. Picture: Bríd O'Donovan

It can be easy to give up when everywhere you look you see confirmation of the narrative that tells you you’re too old, that some things are no longer for women of your age.

Abbington’s words made me think of another woman I interviewed recently for an article about getting fit over forty. 

She’s a weightlifting influencer in her fifties who goes by the Instagram handle @thelykkeviking and she looks a good 10 years younger than her age. 

She has turned her health around and changed her life through achieving her fitness goals, and she changed her mindset in the process, completely rebuilding her confidence in all areas of her life. 

If she could get fit, repair her health, and lift heavy weights, what else might she be able to do? 

Maybe she was equal to difficult challenges, maybe she was not old and obsolete, maybe she did have a full and exciting life ahead of her, maybe she could do, well, anything.

As we spoke, something she said stuck with me. She said that before she had committed to her fitness regime, she had completely abandoned herself. 

She had bought into the narrative that she was past it, dusty, and decrepit, and that life was all downhill for women of her age. 

Sure it’s a lazy and outdated narrative, but that doesn’t mean it’s not present and potent, in the same way that a dead bee can still sting.

As someone who is only getting started in my forties I am hoping to buck that narrative, but I had to admit that her words struck a chord in me. 

When it comes to confidence, I don’t have it in the way that I once did and as the years have clocked up, even though I try to resist putting limits on myself, I do often hear that narrative in my own thinking, in my own sense of confidence as a woman of a certain age.

So how do we change that narrative, or at least resist it in our thinking? Well, seeing women like Abbington and plenty more besides putting themselves centre stage is a decent starting point. 

Seeing those women lit up on stage, also lights up a path for other women of a certain age, allows us to realise that maybe it’s not time to give up on or abandon ourselves, but rather time to reclaim ourselves and our joie de vivre.

Inspiring older women seemed to be everywhere last week. 

As pictures of season two of The Feud: Capote vs The Swans were released, we were treated to a selection of images of older actresses like Demi Moore, Naomi Watts, Calista Flockhart, and Molly Ringwald amongst others, all looking spectacular as Truman Capote’s ‘swans’. 

Just seeing these actresses looking incredible and still playing brilliant parts in their 50s and 60s (yes, Demi is 60 and arguably looks better now than she did as a 22-year-old), decades after their so-called ‘peak’ really inspired me. 

Instead of being thrown on the ‘old-lady’ Hollywood landfill site, they are still front and centre, enjoying lengthy careers.

Somehow just seeing Demi and the rest of the swans still working, still living life and looking amazing made me feel hopeful. 

Seeing women living their best lives at any age can only encourage other women to do the same.

It’s important to see ourselves reflected back at us (OK, I know it’s a stretch to say that Demi is reflecting back any mere mortal but indulge me) doing the cha-cha, being sexy and successful and playful and joyful and living dream lives… 

I think the more we see of women like Abbington and fitness influencers in their fifties and actresses having lifelong careers, the more we can silence the narrative that middle age is a time for women to give up on ourselves.

Perhaps middle age is actually a time for renaissance.