In researching for my new novel 'Little Miss Petty,' I realized just how many remarkable women didn't get their start until after middle age
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/kilpatrick-child-cox-32026-0dbda2be23074ea8964d328c96066ddd.jpg "Sally Kilpatrick, Julia Child, Laverne Cox")
Credit: Mai Phung and Brian Smith; Thomas J. Gibbons/Getty; Rob Kim/Getty
Sally: “And I’m gonna be 40.”
Harry: When?
Sally: “Someday!”
Sally Albright might’ve felt like turning 40 was a death sentence in When Harry Met Sally, but this Sally is now leaning into her 50s. My latest novel, Little Miss Petty, is full of little lessons I’ve learned from the past decade, not the least of which is: 40 is when most of us are just getting started.
My protagonist, Stella Stark, has to re-invent herself at the age of 39. She shares a lot of the worries I had back then: Is it too late to start a new career? Is it too late to find love? Have my most attractive days passed me by?
The world at large would like for us women to think that we should remove ourselves from polite society at that age, an idea that women in recent years have fought against with new success. But “women of a certain age” have always been around, innovating, grinding and generally paving the way for those coming up behind them.
In Little Miss Petty, I decided to take a break from the screwball rom-com aspect of the novel to both give some of these inspirational women their flowers and to remind Stella that there’s plenty more life to live. Stella’s birthday party may not be central to the plot of a private investigator who takes a job distributing karmic revenge for others, but it’s still one of my favorite scenes because Stella’s friends give her gifts to commemorate quite a few remarkable women.
Credit: Sally Kilpatrick
Here are just a few women who did great things after the age of 40:
- Barbara Bradley Baekgaard and Patricia Miller were in their 40s when they started Vera Bradley
- Lucille Ball didn’t achieve fame until I Love Lucy. She was told to quit by a drama teacher and labeled the “Queen of the Bs” for all of her B-movie work, but she kept going and crafted her iconic sitcom at the age of…40.
- “Widow Clicquot” Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin took over the company her father-in-law founded at the age of 27, but she was 39 when she helped develop the riddling table. A blended rosé champagne? That came even later.
Credit: Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty
- Toni Morrison was 39 when she published her first book. She was 57 when she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved.
- Famously, Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until 77. Similarly, Alma Thomas began painting at 69.
- Vera Wang was 40 when she launched a fashion empire.
- Laverne Cox was 40 when she landed her breakout role in Orange Is the New Black.
- Julia Child didn’t graduate from culinary school until she was 39. Her first cookbook came 10 years later, and her iconic television show didn’t begin until she was 50. Child’s The Art of French Cooking served as an inspiration to Ina Garten, who didn’t publish her first cookbook until the age of 50. (Side note: Garten left a career in *checks notes* nuclear energy policy? I want to tell her to pick a lane, but, no. Just keep being awesome, Ina.)
- Chloe Zhao was less than a year away from 40 when she won her first Oscar.
- Ava Duvernay didn’t pick up a movie camera until she was in her 30s. She received her first Oscar nomination for Selma at the age of 42.
- Madeline L’Engle seriously considered giving up writing for her 40th birthday because she’d been rejected so much while in her 30s. Fortunately, she got the idea for A Wrinkle in Time at the age of 39 while on a family road trip and thus kept going.
Credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
- Brené Brown was in her mid-40s when her breakout TED Talk garnered attention. (My character, Stella, names her kitten Brené Brown. For reasons.)
- For heaven’s sake, Demi Moore was 62 when she got her first Oscar nomination for The Substance, a horror film that satirically tackles how the world in general and Hollywood in particular treat aging women.
- And Melani Sanders did the world a wonderful service by creating the We Do Not Care Club. She was 45 when she first went viral for telling the truth about perimenopause, menopause, and post menopause. Now that is something I care about.
Credit: Naji Production
I’m sure that these examples are a mere drop in the proverbial bucket. Heck, I didn’t publish my first novel, The Happy Hour Choir, until (you guessed it) I was 40, which was also my age when I ran my first — and last — marathon.
Maybe 40 is a magical age after all, a sort of line in the sand that we think is an ending but is really just a beginning. Maybe the only thing that ends is looking to the expectations of others thus allowing us to be truer to ourselves. I know that was the case for me.
I just turned 51 this year, and my new adventure was moving across the country after living in the same house for 26 years. Some friends called me brave, but I was ready for the adventure even if I didn’t necessarily want to leave behind those friends and family.
Researching one small birthday scene has made me think about all the new opportunities before me. I have a fancy camera so I can try my hand at photography. I’ve looked at improv and standup comedy classes. Since I’m in metro Los Angeles, I think there’s a codicil somewhere in local law that says I have to try my hand at a screenplay. Then, of course, there’s the Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature just down the road at USC. My own mother completed her doctorate at age 51, so I know I could do it.
Credit: Sally Kilpatrick
Then again, maybe I’ll continue to write novels about women who persist and the men who are brave enough to love them. I can chase plot bunnies down rabbit holes while trying to figure out how to tend the citrus trees in my backyard. After all, with any luck, I’m gonna be 100… someday.
And I want to have a lot of experience to share with younger women coming up behind me because they deserve to know the truth: we’ll all be 40 someday, and it will be fabulous.
Credit: Montlake
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Little Miss Petty will hit shelves on March 24 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
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