By Stephanie Valentine, BA, CNP, MHWC · 6 minute read · Updated October 22, 2026
Men get "silver fox." Midlife women now have "queenager." What the word means, why confidence climbs with age, and how to dress and live for yourself.
When men go grey, we call them silver foxes, and everyone knows it's a compliment. For years I couldn't name a single word that did the same job for women in midlife.
Then I found one. A queenager is a confident, independent woman in midlife, roughly 45 to 70, who is stepping into a new chapter on her own terms. British journalist Eleanor Mills coined the term, and the research on ageing gives it real backing: average self-esteem keeps rising through middle adulthood and peaks around age 60.
After a few heavier editions of The Slice, this one is about the good stuff: where the word comes from, why we care less about other people's opinions as we age, and how to lean in.
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Where does the word "queenager" come from?
The word queenager was coined by Eleanor Mills, former editorial director of The Sunday Times, who founded Noon, an online community for women in midlife. She uses it She uses it for women aged roughly 45 to 70 and pushes back on the old story that men age like wine while women age like peaches.
My friend wears tinsel in her hair, and my closet is all leather, denim, cowboy boots and blue. Here's the word I've adopted for this stage of life, plus the research on why we care less what people think as we get older. (Take my lead - don't care one bit!)
The "teenager" half is what sold me. Teenagers are in transition, trying on identities and figuring out who they are. Midlife has a lot of that energy. Kids grow up, careers shift, bodies change through perimenopause and menopause, and many of us are asking who we want to be next.
The "queen" half is the part teenagers don't get. We bring decades of experience about what suits us, what we enjoy and which opinions are worth our attention.
Is there a female version of "silver fox"?
There's no single word with the same universal pull yet, which is part of why queenager has caught on.
Why do grey-haired men get to be sexy?
The usual explanation comes from evolutionary psychology: men can father children for most of their lives, so the theory says they stay attractive, while women get judged on youth because their childbearing years end. I'm happy to leave that argument in the textbook. Writer Susan Sontag named this "the double standard of aging" in a 1972 essay, now collected in her book On Women. More than fifty years later, we get to decide it doesn't apply to us.
Queenager covers more ground. It's about how a woman carries herself and what she chooses for her own life, whether that's a purple streak framing her face or a sweater set she's loved for twenty years. One of my friends wears tinsel in her hair. That's queenager behaviour, and so is the woman who never touches a trend and couldn't care less.
Do you have to go grey to age with confidence?
No. Ageing with confidence comes down to choosing for yourself, whether that means silver hair, a bottle of blonde or a cosmetic tweak. I love seeing women rock their grey, and I'm unapologetically blonde myself. (I'm also all for cosmetic tweaks if you want, which deserves its own edition.)
What we don't have to do is follow the script we grew up with. When The Golden Girls premiered in September 1985, Rue McClanahan, who played Blanche, was 51, and Betty White, who played Rose, was 63. Their characters were meant to be in their 50s, apart from Sophia.
No way, right? With the set hair and the caftans, that was what this stage of life was supposed to look like on TV. Plenty of us are hitting those ages in boots and jeans, mid-career or just starting something new.
Does confidence really increase with age?
Yes, on average, self-esteem rises through adulthood and peaks around age 60. A 2018 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin, led by Ulrich Orth at the University of Bern, combined 191 studies covering nearly 165,000 people aged 4 to 94 ( https://boris.unibe.ch/120112/, "self-esteem across the lifespan meta-analysis").
Self-esteem climbed strongly until 30, kept rising through midlife, peaked at 60 and stayed level until about 70. It dipped slightly after that and more sharply in the 90s. The pattern held across gender, country and birth cohort.
These are averages, but as a group we're surer of ourselves now than we were at sixteen, even on the days our jeans disagree.
Why do we care less about what people think as we get older?
Experience helps, and so does the spotlight effect, our habit of overestimating how much other people notice us.
In a well-known study from Cornell University, psychologist Thomas Gilovich and his colleagues had students walk into a room wearing an embarrassing T-shirt. The students guessed about half the room noticed. In reality, somewhere between a fifth and a quarter did, depending on how the study is reported.
Other people's opinions of our hair and our hemlines never counted for as much as we feared. My hot take is that "age gracefully" too often means "age quietly," and I'd rather age out loud.
What is enclothed cognition?
Enclothed cognition is the idea that what we wear changes how we think and feel, through the meaning we attach to the clothes and the experience of wearing them. Researchers Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky named it in 2012, after a study where people wearing a lab coat described as a doctor's coat did better on attention tasks.
I've written about this idea before, and I want to be straight about the science. A careful 2019 replication of that original lab coat study didn't find the effect. Then a 2023 review in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, covering 40 studies, found that the newer, better-designed research does support the core idea ([EXTERNAL LINK: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672231182478, "2023 review of enclothed cognition research"]).
What my closet says about me
If you look in my closet, you'd know me in about four seconds: leather, jeans, boots (generally cowboy style, but not exclusively) and a whole lot of blue. My style is rock and roll, and I don't dress to please anyone else. My leather jackets are my Superman cape. When I pull one on with my boots, I stand a little taller, and that feeling is the whole point.
For your own wardrobe, pick the pieces that make you feel most like yourself, whether that's tinsel or a classic cardigan, and wear them on purpose.
How can I lean into my queenager era?
Beyond the closet, here are two easy places to start.
Turn up the music from your teens
A study of nearly 2,000 people across 84 countries, published in the journal Memory by researchers at Finland's University of Jyväskylä, found we form our strongest emotional ties to the music of our teenage years ([EXTERNAL LINK: https://www.jyu.fi/en/news/global-study-shows-why-the-songs-from-our-teens-leave-a-lasting-mark-on-us, "University of Jyväskylä music memory study"]). For women, the peak came just after 19.
I can sing every word of every 80s song, and my husband has never heard one play without me joining in. Build a playlist from the year you turned 19 and dance while you clear the kitchen. Three songs gets you roughly ten minutes of movement and a clean kitchen. If you need more ways to refill the tank, I shared a few in my post on How to recharge when you're running on empty.
Let the dessert be a mess
On of my favourite festive desserts has "mess" right in its name. Eton Mess is whipped cream, berries and broken meringue layered together in a bowl. The popular legend says a Labrador knocked over a pavlova at an Eton College cricket match and the wreckage got served anyway.
Food historians doubt that story. The first written mention, "Eton Mess aux Fraises," dates to an 1893 garden party, according to Atlas Obscura. I love that the polished pavlova and its messy cousin both earned a permanent spot on the dessert table. Try my Eton Mess recipe the next time you host, and join my free class: Stress Free Hosting on November 9
Key takeaways
- A queenager is a confident, independent woman in midlife, a term coined by British journalist Eleanor Mills.
- A 2018 meta-analysis of 191 studies found self-esteem rises through adulthood and peaks around age 60.
- The spotlight effect means people notice our appearance far less than we assume.
- Newer enclothed cognition research supports the idea that clothes shape how we think and feel, though the original lab coat finding didn't replicate.
Ready to host your way?
A queenager gets to set her own menu and still enjoy the evening. Join Enjoy Your Own Party, my free live hosting webinar, on Monday, November 9 at 2 p.m. ET for my timeline for planners and shortcuts for last-minute hosts. Webinar guests also get the earliest look at my Easy Hosting program, which turns your guest count and dietary needs into a menu, a shopping list and a cooking timeline.
Save my free seat for Enjoy Your Own Party
About the author Stephanie Valentine is a holistic nutritionist, clinical hypnotist and mental health wellness coach who helps midlife women sort through the noise and make feeling well simple. She's the author of the award-winning cookbook Love What's On Your Plate and the voice behind the weekly newsletter The Slice.
