My Year as a Middle-aged, Online S3x Symbol
My Year as a Middle-aged, Online S3x Symbol
When my children were 1, 2 and 3 years old respectively, I left my job as a college instructor to be a stay-at-home-mom.
The 'position' lasted over ten years, during which time I lost friends and hobbies, stopped working out, didn't wear makeup, rarely talked about anything that didn't involve my kids, and barely left the house.
For over a decade, I felt... invisible; for all intents and purposes, I was invisible.
But after my divorce, I once again began to prioritize my health, my fit, myself. I decided to have a life again.
And that life was so incredible, so fun, so insane, so heartbreaking... I decided to publish a tell-all, post-divorce sex and dating memoir - and, of course, promote it on social media.
However, I could not have predicted what happened next in a million years...
I became a middle-aged, online sex symbol.
***
On January 1, 2025, I published the ironically (and raunchily) titled memoir, F*ck Me: A Memoir.
I'd never written a memoir before. I'd never self-published before. I'd never marketed any product before, let alone a book.
I had no fucking clue what I was doing.
I attempted to "create a buzz." I designed my Amazon author page, opened an Instagram account, started this blog, joined Goodreads, relearned how to use Facebook and glued it all together with a brand-spanking-new Linktree.
I posted workout videos, 'you-can-do-it' quotes, sexy photos, and homemade dating memes. Basically, I copied anything and everything I saw on successful accounts.
The memes were a hit on Facebook. Within a few months, I had over ten thousand followers. Awesome! I thought.
But it wasn't awesome. Not really. Because the millions of views and tens of thousands of likes and followers didn't translate into a single visit to my Linktree; not a single book sale.
My Instagram page was something else. They didn't want dating memes. They wanted S-E-X. Photos, videos, polls, articles, jokes, stories. They couldn't get enough.
It wasn't long before I started to accrue a very niche set of followers, most of whom fell into the "middle-aged, sexually-confident, divorced, openminded, readers" category. But that wasn't everyone. I had followers who were young and old, married and single, from all different backgrounds and countries.
As I interacted with this strange bevvy of online personalities, I started to really enjoy myself! I even began to cultivate some real friendships.
Consequently, I started selling books. A lot of books.
However, one thing really bothered me. When I'd opened the new social media accounts, I'd assumed that my personal followers would hop right on over and follow my professional pages, giving me a foundation from which to build. Sounds reasonable, right? Well... it wasn't. I didn't get even a tiny fraction of my "real" friends to follow my new pages.
It was devastating; a slap in the face. I knew I was pushing the suburban-life boundaries with my scantily-clad photos and R-rated dating stories, but these were irl friends who told me how proud they were of my writing, my experiences, my book - many of whom had read and enjoyed the memoir... yet they were unwilling to show public support.
I got all sorts of explanations: the title of the book was jarring, they didn't want their employers to see that they followed me, they didn't want their kids to see my photos, their partners were uncomfortable with the material (don't you love a scapegoat?).
It was as if they felt that by engaging with my content, the morals and values of everyone they knew would be compromised, corrupted; and that they would be held accountable. Or, at least, accessory.
I didn't argue, but just how many employers do you think take the time to look up their employees' social media accounts, scroll the accounts they follow, checking their likes and comments and then judging or 'punishing' the deviant employees for their online behavior?
(The answer is, of course, NONE.)
I also didn't point out that every man, woman and child who has access to the internet, has seen sexier footage than I included on my pages - in music videos, during sports halftime shows, in TV ads. If you've ever seen MTV, scrolled on TikTok, visited YouTube or driven down Sunset Boulevard, you've most likely encountered more nudity and sex-adjacent content than I would or could ever offer.
I began to wonder... was it the subject matter of my posts that in and of themselves caused so much offense? Or simply the defiance I posed to the expectations of a middle-aged mother?
If I'd have been twenty years younger, no one would have batted an eyelash. However, our puritanically-rooted society has this idealized perception of mothers as the Virgin Mary, as no longer having sex appeal, sexual desires, or engaging in sexual acts once they've procreated. Unless they're famous. Or mentally ill. (In the case of the former, one is praised, in the latter, pitied.)
Instagram, I learned, operated on much the same biased system. While famous personalities could post anything they wanted, I could not. I soon became frustrated with the ironic catch-22 in which I found myself: the followers I'd amassed on Instagram by posting certain content, who wanted and positively responded to said content, was unable to see new such content because as soon as I posted it, Instagram shadowbanned me. So I couldn't get new followers, nor keep the followers I had happy.
Between the lack of real life supporters and somewhat arbitrary online censorship, I realized I was going to have to work that much harder to create a brand new audience from scratch and share with them the unfiltered, unhinged, fun, funny and, yes, sexy content they craved, despite the obstacles of mismatched expectations, imbalanced online censorship and the mind-bending hypocrisy I faced at every turn.
As the months rolled on, I reached out to content creators, fitness experts, sex experts, authors, readers, podcasters, moms, dads, divorce attorneys - anyone I thought might find my life, my story, or my book relevant.
Many of them did! I started getting traction. Follows, likes... and DMs. A lot of DMs.
It may sound naive, but when I started posting "sexy" photos of myself, I didn't believe anyone would actually find me attractive. I had half a mind that I'd be laughed off the internet. And I'd assumed I'd get the most support from other middle-aged divorced women trying to rebuild their lives, get back in shape after having their babies and taking decades-long self-care haitus' such as I had.
I expected "You Go Girl!"s and praise for being 'brave' enough to bare it all 'at my age,' 'after three kids.'
But shockingly, while a small fraction of my supporters fell into this category, most of the DMs, follows and compliments I got were from YOUNG MEN! Telling me that I was "a sexy online goddess!"
It was... hilarious. It was spectacular!
I've never been "the hot girl." Growing up, I was known as the "quirky friend." When I started dating, I wasn't the girl you shared photos of in the locker room, I was the girl you introduced to your mother.
And, yet, in a startling twist of that bizarre experience called life, I suddenly found myself characterized as a sex object at 45 years old.
What a perfect tail-end to my memoir, I thought. It was picking right up where my 'character' and her lackluster 'arc' left off: from dowdy teacher-turned-housewife to sometimes-confident, somewhat-self-assured, sex-crazed divorcee... to middle-aged online sex goddess! I couldn't have scripted it any better!
Still, I looked at myself in the mirror, I looked at my photos, and I was confused. I was the same person I'd always been. I didn't have some glorious makeover, no plastic surgery, no queer eye magic. Looking back at me was the same nerdy, average anyone I'd always been.
So what was different? How did I suddenly have the appeal to attract men from all corners of the earth?*
And then it finally hit me - sex appeal isn't physical. Sex appeal is, simply put, the emanation of true CONFIDENCE.
Regardless of my failed marriage, the rejections from men I'd endured over the previous few years, the rejections I'd endured from "friends," and, let's be honest, the rejection of my manuscript by dozens of publishers before I successfully self-published...
Despite all of this, I had to admit, I was the most confident I'd ever been - and giving the fewest fucks, to boot. I took pride in my manuscript, my life choices, my healthy habits, my alternative experiences, my body, my pleasure, my desires... I wasn't ashamed, embarrassed or concerned about not fitting in.
I am who I am, take it or leave it, I screamed into the dark vortex of the internet.
Turns out, people found it sexy as hell.
And admirable.
And relatable.
While I was worried, judging by the lack of support I'd received from so many people in my life, that most "mainstreamers" were put off by my exploits, the way I shamelessly exposed my stories, my body, and my thoughts, it turns out, I needn't have been.
So many of the DMS I received weren't sexual advances or dick pics. Most of them were from regular people, like myself, who were on the verge of divorce, going through something terrible, or had already been to hell and back and found their peace, found their pleasure, and offered praise for my willingness to share, to encourage, to give permission to others to do the same.
And those messages have made it all worth it.
***
I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the vastly positive reaction I've received to my book and online presence. After all, the message of my memoir - which I truly believe with all my heart - is that you should give yourself permission to be yourself, to pursue that which fulfills you and brings you happiness, to take life a little less seriously, regardless of what others think or say... because it's your life, not theirs.
So, despite the minor bouts of hesitation I've felt from time to time, the disquietude that creeps into my midnight worries occasionally (fueled by the judgmental tsk-tsking coming at me from the periphery), I've decided to lean in.
If the internet wants me to be a middle-aged sex symbol, then why the hell not? And screw anyone that doesn't understand or support it.
The truth is, whether or not people support your decisions, your work, your choices, says a lot more about them than it does about you.
*Apart, of course, from taking my clothes off and talking about loving S-E-X. Another small detail I'd been exceptionally naive about was thinking that men held women to the same bar of perfection we hold ourselves to; in thinking that if I didn't look like I came straight off the pages of a fashion magazine, that no one would look twice. Boy, was I wrong. And happily so!!
Read more about my journey of self-discovery and all the failures, heartbreaks and bad decisions that led to my transformation from insecure to online sex goddess in my tell-all memoir: F*ck Me: A Memoir
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