Angela Mollard: I don’t want to be The Body, I’m happy now to just be myself

For the first time in my life I am finally content with who I am and understand where I fit in the world, writes Angela Mollard.

There was a time when, having interviewed Elle Macpherson or someone equally stratospheric, I would have come away willing myself to be better.

Fitter. Thinner. Bolder. More disciplined.

If I’d interviewed a celebrated author such as Liane Moriarty I’d think: ‘Why can’t I write bestsellers?’ If it was a compelling actor like Claire Foy I’d think: ‘Angela, you really should have persevered with drama.’ Or if it was any one of the accomplished and beautiful women I have interviewed over the years, notably Katie Holmes, Rebecca Gibney, Amanda Keller, Asher Keddie, Turia Pitt and Teresa Palmer, I would marvel at something specific about them and wish it for myself. I’d yearn for more chutzpah or grit or style or whimsy. Or, if it was Palmer, to be a calmer mother. Sometimes I’d envy other women’s relationships, or their social media following or their genius at parlaying an idea into a success.

Elle Macpherson is trying to fit as much life in to each and every year and we all should, writes Angela Mollard. Picture; Geoffroy Van der Hasselt / AFP

When my friend Sarah Wilson created The I Quit Sugar juggernaut and changed conversations around mental health, I admired the heft of her vision. Whereas she took risks, I seemed clamped to routines even though I really like my work. Likewise, when my old journo mate Meg Mason wrote her sensational novel Sorrow And Bliss I was beyond proud of her but also self-scolding. I’ve had a novel idea scribbled in a notebook for years. Why couldn’t I write the damn thing? I was never jealous. I’m an enthusiast – for people and ideas and art and sport and perspectives, so it’s always been a privilege to interview and craft stories so that the person feels seen and the reader is granted a window into someone’s interior life. But when I interviewed Elle Macpherson about turning 60 for today’s Body & Soul I left our long Zoom call certain that something has shifted.

Rebecca Gibney also continues to live her best life.

Elle was terrific. Wise and playful and deeply in love and proud of her boys and jaw-droppingly, billboard-worthy beautiful. Honestly, check out the pictures. As we said our goodbyes, I waited for that feeling. That lifelong: “I wish I was a bit more …”

And … nothing. Slowly and without me realising it, I have reached the age where I no longer benchmark myself against other women. It’s the tyranny of our gender that so many of us grow up thinking we’d be just a little shinier if we were this or that. If we had a particular talent, or our breasts were bigger or our legs longer or we’d invented something clever or we’d got that promotion, or we could make people laugh or if we hadn’t stuffed up that relationship.

Yet the great gift of middle age is the softening of that lifelong comparing that starts so young and is intensified for new generations because of their 24/7 visual exposure to both peers and those they admire.

For the first time in my life, I am deeply content with who I am and my place in the world. My job is insecure and ephemeral but I’m good at it. More importantly, I really bloody love it. Experience means that even on lesser days my word-wrangling muscle will carry me and on excellent days the flow of thoughts and snippets that I collect like a bowerbird will knit themselves together with a surety that makes writing a privilege. In life, too, I rarely ruminate. If I stuff up and I do, I own it. I don’t wallow in self-loathing but wonder what I’m meant to learn from my error.

I don’t wish for anything anyone else has because that would be an insult to my own hard work and growth. I’m also ridiculously grateful for the simplest things, chiefly my kids being healthy. I like being and seeing kind. Noticing. Encouraging. Being curious.

I hope to die while asking another a question. The book that’s most influenced me in the last few years is Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. The things that stuck: that the day will never arrive when you have everything under control; that you will never be a fully optimised person; that we can waste years postponing what we really care about; that uncertainty is where things happen; that the average human lifespan is, as Burkeman writes, “absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short”.

The same week I interviewed Elle I had lunch with the former ABC news anchor Juanita Phillips, who made the point that the first Gen Xers are now approaching 60. We’re hard workers and have agency in our lives but none of us has bypassed sadness whether we have great wealth or glowing skin or have had the whole world see us as “The Body”.

After interviewing Elle, I felt excited because despite the challenges she’s endured she makes turning 60 look like fun. Look, I may have considered chucking back some of her green powder and I could definitely enjoy a more balanced life but otherwise I’m good. I like me.

Perhaps this is wisdom. Perhaps it’s appreciation. Perhaps it’s the great gift of ageing.

Or perhaps it’s the benefit of having, as Elle told me, “life in your years.”

Originally published as Angela Mollard: I don’t want to be The Body, I’m happy now to just be myself