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Dark-hair dye foam bubbles on my scalp. It dribbles down my cheek as if I’ve face-palmed coffee froth. It spills and stains my toilet seat. I curse. This is a watershed moment for me: my first time using Just For Men dye to cover grey. I’m already bodging it up, praying the end result doesn’t resemble boot polish.
So far, so cringeworthily middle-aged.
Based on official data, as a non-smoker, I’m expected to live about 42 more years. Aged 43, that puts me smack-bang as a middle-aged man. But it’s not a good time to be one.
It seems we can do nothing right. We make everyone cringe, or worse – annoyed – by our very existence. It’s almost a prerequisite to attach the word “crisis” to discussions of middle-aged men, even when we’re happy and not actually having one.
Some of us, such as TV personality Hamish Blake, 44, even do so themselves, self-deprecatingly. He described his newfound enthusiasm for “larger endurance events … like big bike rides and big wilderness adventures” as “all your classic midlife crisis stuff”. But I see that as more indicative of healthier outdoor hobbies than a crisis.
It can make us defensive. When Queer Eye personality Tan France, also 43, recently dyed his own signature silver hair dark for a role, he felt the need to pre-empt accusations of having such a crisis. “Don’t freak out,” he said in a video after saying some seemed “confused” by the colour change. “I just need to make it clear: this is not a midlife crisis.”
Attempts at male self-renewal around this age are often characterised through the cultural cringeworthy cliches that imply they’re pathetic, tragic or laughable.
When Justin Trudeau dared to go to the Coachella music and arts festival with his new girlfriend, Katy Perry, certain female columnists were outraged. The Guardian’s Emma Brockes wrote that it was “just wrong” and “at a certain age, things must change”. She claimed “it’s a specific kind of man who turns up at Coachella to express his anxieties about middle age. In the case of Trudeau, 54, attending a music festival obviously comes a distant second to ‘dating Katy Perry’ as an expression of midlife crisis.”
Writing for this masthead, Michelle Cazzulino described Trudeau’s Coachella attendance, and the casual clothes he wore to it, as “phenomenally irritating”.
I thought I must be missing something. I just saw a man enjoying some music with his new loving partner.
These broadsides at any middle-aged man who has the audacity to wear a cap backwards (guilty as charged after the shoddy dye job) feel harshly unfair, rudely ageist and grossly misdirected.
Trudeau stood up to Donald Trump; he was considered a gender-equality champion; he famously answered in response to a journalist’s question about why half his cabinet were female, “Because it’s 2015.” This led to him becoming the manosphere’s target of mockery.
That women are joining this mockery is disheartening. There are deserving male targets out there; Trudeau, solely for being middle-aged and in love, shouldn’t be one of them. Nor should any man purely by default of his age, fashion choices or harmless hobbies.
When we do have a midlife crisis, I’ll admit, we men do some cringeworthy things. My Dad had a horny little devil tattooed, and bought an Audi TT. Cringe! We wear pleather jackets. We scour for younger partners, buy embarrassingly age-inappropriate convertible cars or – guilty as charged here, too – become mamils (middle-aged men in lycra, on bicycles).
While we can withstand some light ribbing, the sneering that’s crept in is increasingly brutal. It’s also dangerous. Trivialising male vulnerability is a zero-sum game.
Fragile male ego is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s why people like Trump are causing global chaos and doom. I can understand why he’d be a target of wrath. This sniping at middle-aged men in general, though – by laughing at their supposedly inevitable midlife crisis – shadows a deeper crisis.
We constantly say men should express themselves more, then lampoon them when they do in ways deemed distasteful. We blithely make middle-aged men the target of ire and humiliation.
Men account for three-quarters of suicides in Australia. Yet men are far less likely to talk to a counsellor.
They’re more likely than women to lose touch with their friends, so humiliating them for having hobbies – such as cycling in lycra, driving a decent car they worked hard to buy, or enjoying music festivals – feels unwise. My Dad didn’t survive his midlife crisis. He died from his unhealthy coping mechanisms. He never hired a counsellor, despite my urging.
We’re all living longer, so 43 is the new 33. Who cares if we don’t act our age? I, for one, intend to grow old disgracefully, squashing myself into lycra with age-inappropriate hair and clothing, dancing and eating noodles at festivals with music-adoring love interests and tattooing my body wherever I choose. It’ll keep me joyful. It might just keep me alive.
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Gary Nunn is a contributor to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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