Glynnis MacNicol, author of "I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself," joins the show to discuss how single women can (and do) embrace joy and self-discovery — and how to redefine success and pleasure in middle age. Plus, Simone and Danielle get into societal pressures, gender biases in success timelines, and examples of late bloomers who defied societal expectations.
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today, on the bright Side, author Glennis McNichol is here to tell us how to enjoy ourselves. We're talking pleasure, womanhood, and Paris Baby. It's Monday, July eighth.
I'm Simone Boyce, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine.
Happy Monday, Danielle.
It is on my mind Monday, the day of the week when we share something that motivates us, inspires curiosity, and provides a fresh perspective to the week ahead. So what's on your mind today, Danielle.
Okay, what's on my mind is being a late bloomer. So many of us feel pressured by society to achieve success early. There's these lists like thirty under thirty, and we hear these stories of young achievers like Bill Gates and Taylor Swift. But there was a recent article in The Atlantic that I loved and it highlights the benefits of being a late bloomer. And as somebody who feels like a late bloomer in many ways, I just felt so kind of like this article gave me a big hug.
In some ways, this feels very bright side.
I want to hear more.
Oh, I love that.
Yes, it suggests that late bloomers have these unique traits that make them successful. So there's three main ones. The first is intrinsic motivation. They're driven by personal interests rather than external rewards.
Do you identify with that?
I think I was driven by external rewards for a while, like in my twenties, but now I'm driven by personal interests.
Love that that's growth, right, definitely.
The second is diversive curiosity, so it's gained from trying different jobs and interests, which leads to a broad range of knowledge. It's basically like trying on different hats to see if they fit and taking what you like and what you don't like from them. And then the third is wisdom, which is achieved after a lifetime of experimentation and learning. Do you consider yourself a late bloomer at all?
I don't really know how to answer this question because I don't want to compare myself to other people's timelines. So to me, it's like, well, what is what is late?
What is early? What is on time?
Because everybody's on We're all on our own timelines, and I actually quite like my timeline.
I like my timing. I like my journey.
That's so beautiful. I think that's what we're all kind of working towards. Mika Brazinski started she I think she hated the Forbes thirty Under thirty list because she felt the same way, and so she started a whole new list with the fifty over fifty nominations, which I absolutely love seeing. But there's this fascinating statistic from the American Economic Review that the likelihood of a startup success increases significantly between ages twenty five and thirty five, and it continues to rise into the fifties. So the average age of a successful entrepreneur is forty five. And if you were reading the news, you would never think that, because we hear about these like kid geniuses who are eighteen and dropped out of college and walked into a boardroom with a backpack and became a billionaire.
You know, well, we're far more generous with our societal timelines when it comes to men, like it's not surprising to picture a successful entrepreneur who's a man who's forty five years old. But for women, we have these expiration dates that are so punishing.
So well said, I think our fertility probably has a lot to do with it, but when I read other women's stories, it gives me a lot of solace. So I just want to share a few women who quote unquote made it or lived out their moments and their dreams past their twenties. So Tony Morrison was thirty nine when she first published her novel The Bluest Eye, and she won the Pulitzer at fifty six. Julia Childs was in her late thirties when she even tasted French food for the first time, and she published her cookbook at forty nine.
This one.
I love pilot and flight instructor Wally Funk. She's a trailblazer for women in space and aviation. She went to space for the first time at eighty two. So I say all this to say that anybody who feels like they need to embrace the bright side of being a late bloomer, whatever that means for you, please embrace it.
There are examples and stories all around us.
You have plenty of time is an overlooked, under hyped affirmation that I think we can all be extending to ourselves a lot more often.
Yeah, And I think it's fitting to lead into our next guests because She's a prime example of living life on her own timeline and defining success for herself as opposed to living our culture's just blanket definition. Glennis McNichol is an author, podcast host, and producer. Her latest book, I'm Mostly Here to enjoy Myself One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris, has made cultural waves. She discusses how her Resian adventure reshaped her outlook as she approaches fifty.
And how the book came to be as super interesting too. I mean, Glennis was living alone in New York City during the pandemic. During that time, she experienced what she calls quote extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. So she actually went months without touch or face to face contact. So when she was offered the chance to sublet her friend's apartment in Paris, she immediately jumped on the opportunity and proceeded to live her best life for the next six weeks.
And a big theme in all of her books is centering joyful single women, which has been her own personal experience. But here's what I find particularly interesting about her work. Whether she's podcasting or producing or writing, she focuses on the breath of womanhood, and many of the stories she explores are far outside.
Of her own experiences.
She did a critically acclaimed podcast called Under the Influence, which looks at mommy influencer culture. Or she did another podcast called which looked at the history of Laura Ingalls Wilder by actually traveling the US to some of her iconic places. And So, I think this particular book can be summed up by a quote from The New York Times about her memoir. It celebrates women who forge their own paths, ignoring the cultural scripts they've been handed.
I love that.
So I think we have to go off.
Script today with Glennis McNicol. We'll be right back after the break.
Don't go anywhere, y'all. Welcome to the bright Side, Glennis. Thank you guys so much for having me.
We're so happy to have you here.
We hear stories about single women, we hear stories about happy women, but we don't often hear stories about single happy women. And you've written several books that center joyful single women. It's a joyful single woman. I really appreciate it. But there's a Vogue interview you did in twenty eighteen and you said this, I turned forty and promptly discovered it was nothing like what I'd been led to believe leading up to your forties.
What did you believe it was going to be versus what it was?
Oh goodness, I'm turning fifty in September, so taking me back to my thirties feels like.
A stretch at this point.
And I'm really grateful I wrote that book when I did, because ten years on, I look back and I think, was it really as hard as I wrote that it was? But I think it was less what I expected them to be and more that there was no blueprint for what they could look like outside of partnership or parenthood. It sort of felt like the whatever map we'd been given sort of disappeared, and it was like, oh, you have disappeared. There's no version of what life can look like for you if you're not parenting or if you're not partners. So I think the extreme anxiety over that and feeling like I'd failed in some way was overwhelming at that time.
You mentioned anxiety.
It's something that I feel when I tell people that I'm thirty three, I feel their anxiety for me. What did you want your life to look like? Why did you feel like it was a failure. What had you imagined for it?
I think there we don't have rituals around women's lives outside of weddings and parenthood, and subsequently, there's no way to celebrate your life.
And when you have.
No ritual around being successful in the world, it is hard to feel successful. I suppose when no one understands the choices you're making or sees them as valid choices, or no.
One really believes it.
I remember doing a Times article at the time where it was like, no one believes I'm happy, because I would just and it puts you in a strange, like sort of defensive place of like, no, actually, I'm quite enjoying my life, but there's no narrative.
To point to.
You can't I like, here's my happy life. Photos that resonate quite the same way. And I think that that can undermine your sense of success in a way, constantly having it questioned, and then the resentment of sort of feeling like you have to defend yourself. I don't feel any of that anymore, but I think at the time I was like sensitive to it.
Glennis, I want to talk about your latest book. I'm mostly here to enjoy myself. And I feel like I have to mention that I just got back from Paris myself so envious.
The jet lag is still wearing enough.
Yeah, I related to just about everything in this book and I can't wait to really digest it with you. But first I think we have to rewind and set the stage four. How you even got to Paris? So sixteen months earlier, before you move to Paris, you've used the term skin hunger to describe the feeling of being untouched for those sixteen months that you spent in pure isolation during the pandemic. Can you describe what that felt like.
I live in New York City, and when we went into lockdown in March twenty twenty, it was a really strict lockdown, and I live in a very small Upper West Side studio and I was alone in this studio apartment for about fourteen or fifteen months, really alone. And after a while you're like, oh, no one has responded to my physical presence in any way, and I have not had physical contact in any way. And skin hunger is a real term that is used to describe what happens to people who go without touch for extended periods. Of time, and I read a study when I was running the book that scientists discovered that animals who had been restricted from touch for extended periods of time and had the choice between food and touch would go for touch. Is how essential touch is to our functioning in the world. So after those sixteen months, I was really feeling crazy to be embraced, to.
Be seen, like be seen in the most literal way.
I think we talked about women in age and invisibility, and I was like, literally, I just wanted to literally, you know, be seen by people. I like went into my closet and took out all my vintage fur coats and sort of laid them on the bed and lay on top of them as like a way to approximate some sort of tactile experience. Yeah, So it was. It got to a point where it felt like I was crazed. I mean, in hindsight, that's sort of how I exist in my own memory.
Glennis, So you go to Paris and you sublet your friend's apartment, and you mentioned lacking physical touch, but you get there and you have so much physical touch. You have just an overwhelming amount of joy and pleasure. And I'm wondering if you can share a story that's top of mind where you either felt like you lived really outside of yourself or now that I'm hearing this story, a moment where you felt so inside of yourself.
Well, I think I was living for like lockdown, and maybe this is true of everyone.
I was so far outside of myself that getting.
To Paris was sort of re entering my own body, because so much time alone had felt like it was separating me from my physical presence. And so those five weeks where I landed and just like hurled myself into everything pleasurable. I had a very close group of friends there who I missed very much, And after I was there for two weeks, we went dancing on the Seine one Saturday night, which is what it sounds, you know. I joke that there's sort of like the real Paris and the fantasy Paris, but everyonece in a while they overlap.
And that was one of those nights where like all.
The Parisians were had set up picnic blankings and a live band had formed out of the blue, and that turned into this impromptu dance party and I ended up dancing with this very handsome young man all night that then progressed to him coming home with me.
And we had an even more enjoyable night.
The thing that strikes me about that whole five weeks, and one of the reasons that I really wanted to write it down, was like everything went right.
And I think that we rarely.
Have stories about women where everything goes right, especially women alone. I think we attach fear to a woman alone for any number of reasons. But again and again, like every single little thing went right, until I got to the point where I was just like, just enjoy don't second guess it, don't wait for it to.
Not go right.
It's just going to keep going better and better. And it did.
So glynnis when you were talking about the fear that exists around a woman being alone, and I'll take it a step further, a woman enjoying herself alone and experiencing pleasure alone.
I mean, that is so real. I feel that so deeply.
And I'm a married woman, been married for thirteen years, I have two kids, so you know, I I'm living a very different life than the one that you describe in the book. But I actually think that your story is so resonant beyond the identity of singledom because in the same way that living doesn't start whenever single theom ends. Living can't end whenever marriage or partnership begins, right like, we still have to keep living and having these experiences. And that's what brought me to Paris over the past week, and I experienced that fantasy Paris that you were talking about. But the reality is that that fear and that guilt and that shame around making those choices and choosing ourselves still exists. So how do you circumvent that? Are you vulnerable to the critics? Have you trained yourself to tune them out? At this point?
I don't know if it's such a conscious decision. I think part of it is age. I think you start to age out of cultural storylines in a way that I think can be punishing but can also be a real source of strength because there are fewer expectations placed on you. And why there are fewer expectations is the problem in the sense of we don't value women over a certain age for like a wide variety of reasons. When the world is so disinterested in your well being. Generally speaking, it's very hard for me to attach myself to those expectations. And disappointments. So the idea that I would turn around and be worried, like, oh, I should apologize for this behavior or I should feel a shamed for doing this, I think, well, you know you're not doing really anything for me, so why should I take up this brain space thinking about how you feel about this?
What are the conversations that you're having with your married friends about the kind of empowered living that you exemplify in this book.
Most of my friendships are now decades long, dating back to high school or my early twenties, and so I receive nothing but encouragement around my life or support or love, and that's vice versus. So I think they're all really energized by it and sort of love the idea of it, And if they're not in a place where they can participate in it, or even in a place where they would ever want to participate in it, it's enjoyable to note that it's possible and that someone's doing it. A friend of mine said to me the other day that after she read the book, she felt empowered, a very strong word to apply to what's going to be a very small gesture. But she was joking that someone asked her if she wanted an ice coffee, and instead of saying no, no, I'm fine, she said, yes, I would like an ice coffee and I would like it with almond milk. And she was like, I should be enjoying this. I'm not going to be scared to ask for what I need. So that so far has been sort of a fun response. But most of my friends knew this was happening as it was happening, because I was updating, because I was going.
So I think it was fun for them to.
See it in the book form, the What's app texts and everything.
Yeah, exactly, you say.
The Paris group chat is lit.
Yeah, my parents group chatter. None of those women are married. But when I came back, I sort of floated back into New York and I was like, guys, let me see what I've been doing.
Well to that point.
Do you think that French women approach aging, pleasure family relationships differently than we do in the US.
When I'm in France, I feel like aging is more what's the word I'm looking for?
They have a gentler relationship with aging.
That women are considered attractive as they age in ways.
That we aren't here.
I think they have a far more I think more broadly speaking, they have a far more comfortable relationship with sex, and that's European and not necessarily French, but that we are still very puritan here in North America, and that when you're there is not so rare to find older women attractive, or that older women would consider themselves attractive. And there's I notice anyway less procedures happening on faces. But that's anecdotal and anecdotal from my New York experience as well.
But I definitely think they have an easier time with it.
I would say I also was really inspired by just how they live life. I mean, I would go to dinner at ten pm and it would be a three hour dinner, you know, And there's a slowness to life there and a leisurelyiness that I found very appealing and something that I hope I can bring back.
I agree with you one hundred percent.
And I also think France enjoyment is considered I would say, like a human right. It's built into the legislature, essentially, like how many days you can work, how many hours when you retire. I always think a good example of this is when you're unemployed. In France, you get free access to museums, Like there is this sense that this is like a part of life, and I think in America pleasure has to be earned, like you have to financially, but also through work, and that I think is what we feel that when we get there is just like, oh, this is just how the day goes.
You don't have to justify it.
We need to take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Stay with us and we're back.
Glinnis, you have this theory that the female narrative is based on the male orgasm.
Will you elaborate on that.
I feel like the narrative structure as we understand it for everyone is based on the you know, the male orgasm, which makes sense when you think men were primarily and are still primarily the storytellers and that is the fundamental experience of life. It's sort of, you know, it's a three act structure. It's like set it up, tension, culmination, the end, and it just drops off after that.
And I think that that happy ending.
I mean, you can talk about the phrase happy ending if you want to, in terms of how it gets applied.
In a massage situation. Sometimes.
But I think because I've struggled so many times to convince people that the life I'm living is deserving of a narrative because it doesn't fill the classic narrative structure that we understand. It is always the question of, well, how do we know that you're happy? How do we know that you've been a success if we can't cap this off in ways that we're familiar with that I really started rethinking narrative structure and thinking, you know, what if it didn't resemble the male orgasm, and what if it resembled a female orgasm, which is more like waves, and some are bigger and some are smaller, and there's not necessarily like an end, you know, like it just maybe it keeps going in ways and maybe the high point is earlier and that at the very end.
First of all, I love that analogy. I think you're right, and I love the imagery of waves. So much of our life looks like that. You've mentioned sort of like the the markers of success a few times, and I'm wondering how you measure it in yourself.
Now, I would say I came out of that trip. That trip I sort of think, in hindsight, was like a doorway into middle age. I was forty six turning forty seven, and I hope this is middle age, you know, you hope that you have another forty years. But as like, I came through it, and I came out of it feeling so excited and powerful and just really feeling like all the warnings I'd been told about age were a lie, and until proven otherwise, I was going to assume it was all a lie. And so I think just maintaining the sense of agency and optimism and trying to align myself with my acts in a sense of like, how do I exist in the world. Is that aligned with the person I know I am to be because I'm fully within myself. I mean, I hope everyone by the time they get to fifty feels fully within themselves, and I do.
And so to maintain.
That sort of groundedness within myself and make sure that you know, you keep going with.
That, which is not always easy.
I think when you don't see any sense of yourself reflected in the culture, it can be hard to believe that you are enjoying yourself as much as you are because you're not seeing a reflection of it, and you really have to have full faith in your own experience because there's very little to back it up.
And maintaining that I think is really important.
It's hard to believe that you had any doubters before you published this book, because, oh God, I've been seeing this book everywhere. I mean, you were on CBS Mornings, you were on our friend Mary Jane Fahee's page. Everyone is loving this book, and so I'm so thrilled for you that you're getting this response. And there was this line that really stuck out to me that you've written that you said the thing women fantasize about the most is freedom. That line really stopped me in my tracks. What was on your mind when you wrote that? Was there a chapter of your life that you were thinking about.
It was a friend of mine who was researching the history of pornography and saying, one of the reasons it's so difficult to make pornography that appeals to women is because women don't fantasize about sex necessarily as their greatest fantasy. They fantasize about freedom. A funny historical anecdote is when the two wheel bike was sort of first emerged on the scene at the turn of the last century.
It was huge for women.
It was the first time they were able to go places is at a chaperone. Prior to that, the only women who were able to sort of walk alone in the streets were sex workers who needed a license from the city, but otherwise you needed a chaperone. And so women were able to travel by themselves. But the men tried to push back on women on bikes by saying that young women might inadvertently experience an orgasm from the bicycle seat, and this was their argument for not allowing women on bikes. And I that is where that line comes from, because I thought, I always thought, like, oh, the orgasm that women are going to experience on these bikes has nothing to do with the physical experience. It has to do with like the absolute thrill of being able to go somewhere by yourself when you want and how you want, and that that was a possibility and how thrilling that is. And in these five weeks really for myself interrogating what that meant. And I think bigger picture is this sense of and going back to turning forty with this sense of, oh, you're not partners, you don't have children, you fit the sort of stereotype of what we believe to be sort of a failure or sad woman, and really understanding that I recognized all of the opportunity available to me, and that I was a person who was built for the life I was leading, and that I was so grateful to have the opportunities I had because I was a person who could take advantage of them in every way, not just you know where I was born, when I was born, the education I had access to, but that I was able to run with this in a way that felt completely true to myself and how fortunate I am that that's possible, because God knows, there's been play any of women who are built to live the life I'm leading and never had the opportunity to do so. So I think it was sort of a culmination after this trip or during the strip, of really recognizing that I in the exact life I'm supposed to be in, and thank God I had access to a life that so fits the person I am so completely.
You've worked on some critically acclaimed shows. One that I loved was Under the Influence, which looks at mommy influencer culture. You worked on Wilder, which looked at the history of Laura Ingles Wilder by actually traveling the US to some of her iconic places. And what I noticed is that both shows, as well as your books, they all focus on women and the breath of womanhood.
And so I have a very general question.
For you, which is, where did your interest in womanhood come from?
I'm a writer in the place I write from is like a place of observation, and there came a point where you just I wanted to see some version of my life reflected in the world. And in the case of Wilder, the Little housebooks were, you know, pivotal to me. There were early books I read. It's when I decided I wanted to be a writer. And when we say in the podcast we pull out my little Diary from when I was six and.
Being like, I want to be a writer, like Loring, goes Wilder.
And so I think it's more this sense of I crave at all times narratives that reflect not just how I'm existing, but like, my life is not that unusual. I can look to my left and right, and I know the dozens of women living similarly to me at my age and making similar choices, and it's just I just happened to be one of the people who put it to paper. But the fact it feels unusual is always so enraging to me, because I'm like, why aren't we seeing the movies and the television shows around this?
And so I'm always just like.
Digging around trying to throw some version of it up there because I'm not seeing it.
It doesn't feel like I'm seeing it enough.
Well, Glennis, You've clearly struck a nerve with this book, and I think that's because we all have this universal desire to live an empowered life, as you are clearly living, and I believe that it's never too late for women to start living unapologetically. So when you look back on all these rich life experiences that you've had, what is the secret to liberation?
I'm not sure I conceive of my life in these terms. Is maybe the challenge here.
I don't think that I'm not unusual, is the interesting thing. When I look around, I don't actually find myself to be that unique. I think it's a long process of just of wanting to do what makes me feel in charge and more powerful, and working relentlessly to align how I make a living with how I want to exist in the world, which is with as much agency and latitude is possible. And I don't know that you know that looks different for everyone, but it does feel to me that at some point I stopped feeling shame around any part of my existence. And that comes down to I think there was a point where I thought, who's benefiting from my feeling ashamed?
Right?
Like?
I actually think that's a good question for everyone to ask themselves if you're feeling shame in a certain experience or in a certain decision, like who benefits from that shame?
Do you benefit from it?
If there's a general sense of like, oh goodness, she's doing what she wants, who benefits from you feeling bad about that? Because usually not anyone who's opinion you're interested in.
I would argue, is there a word that does resonate for you? Like I've heard people use the word untamed? You said liberation doesn't totally hit like what feels right for you?
I think agency is a word that I tend to come back to a lot. I'm able to make choices for myself and I'm not scared to make them, and.
That feels good. That feels successful to me.
I love that we'll go with agency.
Then, yeah, Glennis, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you both for having me.
Thank you, Glennis.
Glennis McNichol is a writer and the author of I'm Mostly Here to enjoy Myself.
You can find it wherever you get your books.
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, we're headed to the Olympics with American breaker Sonny Choi. She's currently training to compete in break dancing at this summer's Paris Olympics.
Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Simone Boye.
You can find me at Simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.
I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok.
That's ro Ba.
Y see you tomorrow, folks.
Keep looking on the bright side.