Why Millennial Women Are Suddenly So Obsessed With the Midlife Crisis

I co-host a podcast called The Millennial Sandwich, and when we polled our audience to learn what they want to want to hear two almost 40 ladies yap about, the answer was clear: The millennial midlife crisis.

We gave the people what they want, and we quickly realized that this particular issue is top of mind for so many of our fellow millennial women.

For so long, we've been sold this idea about middle age. Men turn 50-ish, buy a hot little car, have an affair with much a younger woman...essentially upend their entire life as they face their own mortality.

Women, on the other hand? They become invisible in midlife, according to the narratives we've been handed. They disappear into the background of their own lives. But if there is one thing I know about millennial women, it's this: We won't retreat into the shadows without a fight. And thanks in part to social media and other digital platforms, we don't have to. We get to control the narrative and steer the conversation on these platforms.

And we get to put a new narrative about the much-discussed midlife crisis in place...and maybe we even get to give the entire concept the full rebrand it deserves.

Because maybe it isn't a crisis at all. Maybe it's a pivot. A moment of reinvention. An era that is less about falling apart and more about redirecting. (But also...maybe it's perimenopause?)

I'm seeing so many women, both online and IRL, who are rethinking so many pieces of their lives, perhaps most notably, career. They're giving themselves permission to do less, to invest more in their relationships, to think more about their overall health as opposed to just how they look.

We're setting the stage for the rest of our lives. We're confronting our imperfect relationships to burnout and hustle and beauty standards and guilt and pressure. So call it a midlife crisis if you want...but I have a feeling we're going to emerge from this moment better than ever.