I spent my late adolescence absorbing the aesthetics of a decade that gave us heroin chic and super-waif as aspirational categories. I watched Victoria Beckham get weighed on live television two months after giving birth. I saw Kate Moss get widely celebrated for saying "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."

There's a word running through every piece of advice aimed at midlife women right now: reinvention. The whole conversation assumes the woman you are now needs repackaging. I'm more interested in something else.