The best thing about revenge is that it’s sweet, but totally non-fattening. Maybe that’s why women are drawn to it? And sadly, we have a lot to want to avenge! Regrettably, women are still runners up in the human race. 100 years since the suffragettes chained themselves to the railings and we still don’t have equal pay. We’re also getting concussion hitting our heads on the glass ceiling, plus we’re expected to clean it whilst up there. And then, once we hit menopause, we’re put out to career pasture. In short, any woman who calls herself a ‘post feminist’ has kept her wonder bra and burnt her brains.
But on a positive note, women are also each other’s human wonder bras; uplifting, supportive and making each other look bigger and better.
When Cressy, Jo, Matilda and Penny are accused of passing their ‘amuse-by’ dates, they join forces to plot diabolical revenge against the men who have betrayed them.
All the ageist sexism in this book is based on real stories – either anecdotes from friends, my own experiences or gleaned from newspaper articles. The ageist sexism is sewn in our psyches. For example, a man my age is lorded as “silver fox” whereas I am dismissed as an old hag, a bag and a crone. I’ve never heard a man dismissed as ‘mutton dressed as ram”, have you? And yet, post menopause, is the most productive time of a woman’s life.
My only motto is “laugh and the world laughs with you – cry and you get salt in your champers.” Which we definitely don’t want! But if you can laugh at something, it takes the sting out of it. And women are so funny. When you go on a girls’ night out, don’t you have to be hospitalised from hilarity? If I have any strength as a writer, it’s putting down on paper the way women talk when there’s no men around.
It’s a great male myth that women aren’t funny. I think the men who say this are just worried what it is we’re being funny about. I presume they think we spend the entire time talking about the length of their penises, which is not true, as we also talk about the width, which after childbirth, is so much more important! If a man ever tells you that women can’t tell jokes, simply reply “that’s because we work for them.” Or marry them; whichever is appropriate!
Plus, I also think if you disarm with charm, you have much more chance of getting your message across.
It’s unbelievably touching, humbling and blush-inducing. How can I ever thank them? I’m going to offer them both an internal organ if they need one – although not the liver, obviously. If I gave a blood sample it would be chardonnay positive!
I want to keep writing books that champion women, especially women of a certain age. I’m sick of reading books where mature women wither from unfulfilled longings, wilt away with loneliness and finally get eaten by their cats. I’m also fed up of crime fiction where no dog walker can kick a pile of dead leaves in a moody lit woodland without hitting the decaying foot of a female victim who was deemed to be ‘slutty’, ‘naggy’ or needed her ‘comeuppance’.
I don’t know any women like this. My girlfriends are all swinging off a chandelier with a toy boy between their teeth. Studies reveal that, for the most part, women in their 50s, 60s and 70s are healthier, happier, richer and sexier than any generation in history. These women in their prime are still young enough to have adventures but are also aware that the clock is ticking, making us more candid, confident and unconcerned by judgemental criticism. “Adventure Before Dementia” is our creed.
If a woman is healthy in middle age, then she’ll probably live to 96, which means there’s a hell of a lot of experiences still to be had and books to be written celebrating older women. As I kind of invented “chick lit” and then “mummy lit” I think it’s time to invent a new genre which encourages women to go forth and be fabulous. A witty, gritty, fun and life-affirming genre. What about I-Don’t-Give-A-Shit-Lit?
I’d just like to add that I also hope men will slip between my covers – my book covers that is. Equality can never be achieved till men join us at the barricades demanding equal pay. We’d also like blokes to work out that ‘mutual orgasm’ is not an insurance company. And to help more around the house, especially in the kitchen. The way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach – that is not aiming too high! What does a woman really want in bed – breakfast. Oh and a good book, hopefully this funny, feminist tale.
