"I turned 40 and gained a superpower."

What if the one thing that all women hate about getting older, was actually a tremendous advantage?

I know the exact moment that I realised I was invisible.

I was walking down a busy Sydney street with a young, attractive, female colleague. Car horns kept peeping. I turned to my friend and said, “I didn’t think men DID that any more!” And then I realised. They just didn’t do that to ME any more.

Men had not changed, they had not evolved from horn-peeping and cat-calling and harassing young women on train platforms, as I had gloriously, fleetingly imagined. They just didn’t see a grown woman as worthy of harassment. And I had certainly passed over into grown woman territory, without any fanfare, some time ago.

It was a learning moment.

Of course, I don’t miss being yelled at in the street by idiots. But there’s a definite jolt when you realise that period of your life is over. That the stretch from adolescence to well, now, when you feel men’s eyes on you wherever you go, leaving a film of unease on you as pass by, has gone.

That’s over. And you mourn it a little, because women are taught from when we are tiny that how we look matters a great deal and suddenly, no-one can see you, so what you look like matters far less.  To other people, at least.

Well done James Bond. This will be the best sex you ever had.

Much has been said about women ageing out of cultural relevance. About the reality of losing the focus of the Male Gaze, Some of it frivolous, like being overlooked for service at the bar (okay, that’s not so frivolous when you REALLY need a drink), some much more serious, like the fact that over 40s women are becoming increasingly likely to struggle when looking for work.

And if you compound age with mothering young children, as many Gen Xers are doing, then hitting your 40s can sometimes feel like a crippling crisis of relevance.

BUT WAIT. Put down the vodka. There’s good news.

THERE’S GREAT NEWS.

And the Good News came to me, as it does, when I was cleaning the kitchen and listening to a podcast – look at me, listening to podcasts, so hip, so relevant!  – and the outrageously talented, very visible writer and broadcaster Hanna Rosin said this, as part of a discussion about the concept of Bright Young Things.

“My friend has reframed this [ageing issue] for me. She says that actually we should start to think of invisibility  as a superpower.

Really, because no-one can see you, you can shed a lot of the different worries as you enter your 40s and 50s and you can create, achieve and not play in that way any more, that there’s a freedom in that invisibility that we don’t take enough advantage of.”

Did you hear that?

We should start to think of invisibility as a SUPERPOWER.

YES.

Thank you, Ms Rosin. Ask the Invisible Man. Ask Harry Potter and his crew of crafty co-horts, Ask Jessica Alba (one of the world’s least invisible people, it’s true) in The Fantastic Four.  Yes, her.

Because there is something immensely freeing about ageing out of anxiety about your appearance.

There’s a target on the face of every woman in her forties.

Instead of bemoaning something as insignificant as no longer being ogled, we need to remember what makes the over-40 woman – let’s call her The Invisible Woman – powerful. A superhero, no less.

When you open your mouth and say interesting things, people listen. Because the Invisible Woman talking is really, really freaky. You’re “old”, maybe you’re “a mother” and you still have things to say? And because you no longer talk all the time – you have aged out of the anxious need to constantly fill a silence – you’re speaking when it matters.

You know that often, listening is more important than talking. With maturity often comes the end of the conversation style where all that’s really happening  is you’re waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can start. You learn to value interesting conversation as one of the best possible uses of your limited time. So, you listen.

You know that all things pass. You’ve seen a great deal come and go.While everyone around you is losing themselves in the drama of today’s crisis, you can see that one day this will be a story, another thing that you lived through, another notch on your belt. There is not too much that can happen that will shock you.

There’s freedom in the fact that no-one is looking at you. I am not suggesting for a moment that there every woman over 40 is not worth looking at. I could list a thousand beautiful, sexy women over 40 from whom it’s hard to tear your eyes. BUT, you are no longer paralysed by insecurities of WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE if you do something unusual, wear something that’s not in fashion, turn up somewhere alone, dance too much, sing too loudly, say the wrong thing. You have learned that really, almost everyone is so caught up in themselves, they barely notice what others are doing. Not really.

You are no longer desperate for everyone to like you. Because the people who matter can see you very clearly,  you don’t need the whole world to.

You do not have to compete at games you can’t win. You can look on a bright-eyed 22-year-old woman as the thing of great beauty she is. She is an apple, you are an orange. There’s no point in trying to be her, so you don’t try. Unlike when you were also 22, and you spent a long time trying to emulate her hair, her clothes and her confidence. And it sucked.

Not everyone can see you, but you can see them – VERY clearly. With age comes a heightened bullshit detector and an ability to see through phoneys. When someone is insincere, you can feel it, you can see it, and you can choose to step away and not play their game.

When people want you, they want you.  The Invisible Woman does not have to question motives. You do not have to worry that you are a trophy, or a relevance prop, or a conquest. You  know for sure what you  knew deep down all along – that you’re  worth a great deal, are talented and smart, and nobody’s handbag.

Oh, and you can rob banks. Because Invisible people can do that.

Do you ever feel invisible?