Skip to main content

Dubai Stereotypes: Mid-life Mummy

Mid-life Mummy is a woman in crisis. If she's not careful, she sometimes muses, she's might well end up buying a Harley, dying her hair purple, getting piercings in odd places and hanging out with hookers.

Since she turned 40, Mid-life Mummy has the feeling that time is running out and what has she actually achieved? Ok, she's managed to spawn a handful of sprogs, maintain a reasonable marriage (and if Jeremy put the toilet seat down once in a blue moon it would probably be the perfect marriage) and she had a half-decent career once, but she's hardly made a dent in her 'things to do before I'm 40' list and now that timescale is sadly out of date.

Frankly, MLM feels old. She feels past it. And this is not a good thing.

Suddenly having kids enrolled in one of Dubai's swankiest schools, two luxury holidays a year and a top-of-the-range Land Rover is not enough. Even the membership at the Golf Club seems a bit hollow these days, although when Jeremy first got it she was thrilled, of course. Her friends were so envious!

MLM tried to give herself a makeover to see if that would help, but her expensively cut and highlighted hair feels a bit stiff and, at a certain angle, makes her look frighteningly like Nancy Reagan. The botox and fillers worked as they should, but they didn't make her look young exactly, just glossier and more polished. The same goes for all the carefully selected outfits she splurged on at S*uce recently - they looked cool in the shop but on her...well, they just look like expensive clothes covering the carefully gym-honed body of an older woman.

When MLM goes to Pierchic or the Rivington Grill for supper, she looks at her equally glossy and similarly prosperous dining companions and sighs. Secretly she would rather be dancing on the sand at Nasimi Beach and getting down with the kids. But how could she? Jeremy would think she's gone mad, not to mention the fact that it would probably ruin her pedicure.

What to do? Mid-life Mummy is at a loss. Tomorrow, she decides, she will book herself in for a day at the Angsana Spa and see if one of their glorious massages will help give her clarity. And if not, well, there's always next week's charity tennis tournament to distract her...

Most likely to say:  "Fine wine gets more valuable and sought after as it ages, while older women simply get shoved into the bin ends category. Life really isn't fair, is it?"
Least likely to say: "Sod ageing! I'm going to celebrate my wrinkles with a hot toyboy and a round-the-world ticket - first stop, Buenos Aires!"

Comments

Anonymous said…
If the Angsana Spa is thta good then I'm going there right now!
Anonymous said…
Why don't women put the seat up? The reason men put it up is so that the cleanliness of the bowl can be seen clearly and one doesn't pee all over the seat. It's perfectly logical: the toilet should be left open and showing the greatest possible expanse of whiteness! Only slobs who leave skid marks on the porcelain need to cover it over.
Plastic paddy said…
Does going to Amsterdam to see Take That in the summer with my 45 year old sister count as a mid life crisis?
Anonymous said…
To Plastic Paddy - YES. Time is running out. Enjoy!
Anonymous said…
Over 40! Over the hill! Time to get pompous and do good works in the community OR start kicking your heels and enjoy yourself! Your choice 40+.
Unknown said…
I'm going (ahem..being taken) to see Rod Stewart this summer. That's a crisis. No mid-life about it.
Kate B. said…
Take That and Rod Stewart? You are in big trouble, ladies! You might as well start targeting your toyboy right now!
Anonymous said…
Toyboy(s) targeted and won already. You are only as young as the boy you feel after all. Better than Botox ladies!
Anonymous said…
I'm 53 and people my age think I'm 30. Should I be having a crisis?

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the