The Cut - We're Getting Midlife All Wrong

I didn’t want to dread 40, so I decided early on to celebrate and welcome it. Most women I know declare it their favorite decade, when they finally started to feel like themselves. I wanted to embrace this attitude — it’s going to happen either way; might as well welcome it. But there’s a kind of perverse duality at play with aging, especially as a woman, that encourages us to be both joyful at the inevitable (“40 is the new 30!”) and yet fearful of the same (“Here’s 10 Ways to Never Look Your Age After 40!”). And our obsession with getting older is so focused on the physical, on how it looks, that we don’t end up prepared for what it feels like to truly contend with middle age in an honest and empathetic way.

How poinsettias became America’s Christmas flower of choice. Did you know that Barbie’s current Dreamhouse is a Hype House? A new study we can only assume is titled “DUH” shows that states with more abortion restrictions have higher maternal and infant mortality rates. How to set a New Year’s resolution you may have an actual chance in hell of seeing through. It seems there’s more to snakes than meets the eye. It took only 13 years, but Party Down season three finally has a premiere date and teaser. Hot girls love Blank Street Coffee. The best books to gift, according to authors like Emily St. John Mandel and George Saunders. And on the tenth anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, four survivors of elementary-school shootings look back.

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