She was 42?! I’m 44

[AmIoldbutdontrealiseit]

Shirley Valentine. Sat watching it on Channel 5, obviously seen it before but when very young so it didn’t have quite the same impact.
Cannot believe she was 42, I’ve just turned 44 and whilst I don’t feel young, I’m surely not frumpy and middle aged, pretty as she was, if you know what I mean?
The anorak wearing, egg and chip making and very mumsy, almost grandma feel?
I realise it was set in the 80’s but is it that we look/act younger now, or that we’re really middle aged and frumpy but don’t realise it 😬
In comparison, I have a 3 year old Dd, a career, live abroad, have longer hair, wear converse, parka and Gucci bag (just example today’s outfit) use Instagram, have many interests. My life is mainly centred around Dd so isn’t wild as in before, clubbing, festivals, travelling etc…but..is this what my age is really like inside?

Hope that made sense 🤣

isnt it her husband, who is boring and set in his ways?

I don't get your point @BoudecaBains? I'm also 43. But we weren't 43 in the 80s, and probably would've looked and acted very differently if we had been.

In the late 70’s I had a work colleague who was about 22 and imo dressed like an old woman and had a granny perm.
She’s on fb now and is exactly the same.
Still looks older than other women her age.
She’s very happy, married, adult dc and enjoys her life.
But to my shame I shudder at how she looks and dresses. It makes me really shallow doesn’t it?

When you look at your parents family photos is when you see how old not just the women, but the men look too.
When I look at my parents wedding photos with my grandparents on them, I never fail to be shocked at how old my grandparents look, even though they would only have been in their early forties then.
If I'm honest, one of my grandmother's on the photo looked exactly the same when she died some forty years later to me.
Different lifestyle and expectations I think. To be fair to my grandmother, she did have fourteen kids, which will have aged her.
I look at photos of myself and my siblings taken in the eighties and I think blimey, I look almost as old as my mother with my poodle perm and heavy make up. ( Although obviously at the time, I thought I looked the height of sophistication. Haha )
I love the Shirley valentine film. Him poking his finger into the egg yolks makes me laugh every time.

Just a cotton picking minute !

I've never heard anyone use that term except my mum!

It’s not just about age. All of Willy Russell’s major plays (Shirley Valentine, Blood Brothers and Educating Rita) examine the major theme of working-class women trapped in, and prematurely aged by, a life of drudgery. There’s a line in Blood Brothers where Mrs Johnstone says ‘by the time that I was twenty-five I looked like forty-two’ because she’s had seven children already.

If you enjoyed SV then I highly recommend Educating Rita. She has a lot of the same frustrations as Shirley but is only twenty-six.

Everybody looked older in the 80s. But obviously, we didn’t realise about that until 20 years later.

The clothes and hairstyles were not exactly flattering.

I'm almost 50 and live a very different lifestyle! My kids have left home (well back for university holidays) and we definitely are middle aged as far as age is concerned (complete with increasingly creaking joints) but I've never made egg and chips in my life and there's nothing staid in the bedroom department

i dont get your point op,
your life is different from shirley valentine
shock horror you have a 3 year old and wear converse trainers.

judge yourself perhaps in 20 years
she had a boring life, married to a boring man - age is irrelevant

I think you have to blame the author of the play - Willy Russell.

She wasn't typical of most women in their 40s, in the early 80s.

In that era, I was roughly 10 years younger than she was in the film.

I cam assure you that the way she was portrayed as a 42 year old was not typical.

You need to focus on the 'message' of the film (it was originally a stage play) and ignore the fashions. It's more about a 2nd chance in midlife and a woman worn down by a boring husband, who wants to live a little. She could be any age. Russell just happened to make her 42 (and that says more about his attitude to women than anything.)

I think this every time I watch SV! I think it’s the clothes and hair. Women in their 40s in the Seventies/Eighties generally didn’t wear their hair long or wear jeans - it was all set perms and elasticated waists! I actually shuddered when I saw in the Sunday Times Style section this week that Eighties’ thin eyebrows are making a comeback - they’re SO ageing!

When my mum was 40, the age I am now, she and most of her friends had cut her hair off short.
I think the invention of ghds etc has made it much easier to maintain a longer but still 'grown up' hair do.
When I look back a generation further my grandparents look much much older in their early 40s than we do now.

@Loudestcat14

I think this every time I watch SV! I think it’s the clothes and hair. Women in their 40s in the Seventies/Eighties generally didn’t wear their hair long or wear jeans - it was all set perms and elasticated waists! I actually shuddered when I saw in the Sunday Times Style section this week that Eighties’ thin eyebrows are making a comeback - they’re SO ageing!

Were you around at that time? I was and can assure you that women did wear jeans and didn't all have perms.

I think everyone has to take what is on a film with a large pinch of salt.
You need to accept that some aspects of life can be exaggerated on film to make a point.

They needed to make her dowdy to show how she was at the time in her marriage/ life and how she could change it all.

www.distractify.com/p/aging-faster-in-past
People did age faster in the past, as well as the ageing effect of wearing what are old fashioned styles to us now.
I agree with a pp who said the whole point of the story was that she had fallen into a boring rut and grown old before her time and how she transformed. But there is also a change in how people are expected to look at a certain age and I think 40s is now seen as more youthful than it was in terms 1980s.

@JinglingHellsBells

I think you have to blame the author of the play - Willy Russell.

She wasn't typical of most women in their 40s, in the early 80s.

In that era, I was roughly 10 years younger than she was in the film.

I cam assure you that the way she was portrayed as a 42 year old was not typical.

You need to focus on the 'message' of the film (it was originally a stage play) and ignore the fashions. It's more about a 2nd chance in midlife and a woman worn down by a boring husband, who wants to live a little. She could be any age. Russell just happened to make her 42 (and that says more about his attitude to women than anything.)

He made Rita twenty-six. Absolutely nothing to do with his 'attitude to women' and everything to do with his examination of the ways in which social expectations of working-class women left them trapped and unfulfilled. It's in absolutely everything he wrote, from Our Day Out onwards. Sometimes they get out (Shirley, Rita, possibly Linda from Stags & Hens) and sometimes they don't (Carol in Our Day Out, Mrs Johnstone and Linda in Blood Brothers).

I was just watching Seinfeld on Netflix yesterday and thinking how they all look older than they are meant to be (men and women!). I think they are supposed to be early/mid 30’s(?) but they look more like late 40s (or 40’s at least!)… it’s the fashion/hair/make-up I think.

People looked older in the past. There have been discussions about it on twitter and similar where people have shared photos of their grandparents in their 20s or 30s and they look so old.

Jinglinghellsbells I very much was around and it’s how all the women in my family over the age of 40 dressed - and some younger too! My Nan was 45 then and had her hair set every week in her kitchen by a mobile hairdresser and her friends did the same.

I’ve often though this watching 80s sitcoms. For example Ever Decreasing Circles - they’re all meant to be in their 40s but dress like they’re in their 60s.

I couldn’t believe that Sally Field and Dolly Parton both were 42-43 when they filmed steel Magnolias , they just looked so old compared to women in their 40s now .
And I remember watching twin peaks and thinking they can’t be teens, and then I did some search and it turns out they were all indeed 19 or 20, they just looked so old, the only person who looked young was Peggy Lipton who was 44 at that time, but didn’t have a heavy late 80s makeup or stiff aging hair cut ,
So it must be the fashion and makeup.
But I also think we generally look healthier and younger now due to our lifestyle.

To your kids, you look as old as her. Tough love.

I can see where you are coming from.
I'm 46 now, and think back to when my Mum was the same age (a scary thought in itself!). So I'd have been 17 when she was 46.
She had short permed hair. I have long straight hair.
That's probably about the only thing that stands out to be fair, but at the time I just saw her as older than I perceive myself to be now.
Difficult to explain really.

I also think back to teachers I had in primary school and realise they were actually a lot younger than I thought they were at the time. Most of them who I perceived then as "middle aged" were actually several years younger than I am now.

@2022newname

In the 80’s even 20 year olds looked a bit frumpy thanks to the fashion. Also I believe that Pauline Collins was more like 48 when it was filmed.

All those frumpy rara skirts and big hair?

I think she was meant to look frumpy because of the life she'd been leading that's why going to Greece had such an effect on her and she realised what she'd been missing.

A few years ago I reread the Railway Children and was horrified to discover that Perks the Porter celebrated his 30th birthday. I kept thinking 'I'm older than Perks!' but when I reached the film I was relieved to see that Bernard Cribbins' Perks was older - 40 maybe?

One of the shocks of being an adult: characters you think of as old (or older) turning out to be younger than me!

Bernard Hill as Joe was 45 back in 1989 and he seems much older than DH who will be 47 soon. I guess everyone just seemed older in their 40s back then whereas now there seems to be much less of a distinction between various ages and stages in life.