Midlife Mean Girls

A new book By Kristen Coffield

Releasing Spring 2024

Midlife Mean Girls

A new book By Kristen Coffield

Releasing Spring 2024

midlife mean girls book by kristen coffield - graphic of three women with black sunglasses on

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Mean girls show up at all ages, and midlife is no exception.

Midlife Mean Girls can be on the sidelines at kids’ sporting events, in the office, and of course, online, where mean girls can create havoc at will. Most recently, the fascinating Gwyneth Paltrow ski accident trial created a social media frenzy taking apart everything she did, said, and wore. And let’s not overlook the “Gwyneth sometimes has bone broth for lunch” drama that played out in double frame on Instagram, where women by the thousands took to mocking the out-of-context comment.

This scintillating mean girl phenomenon is a type of behavior known as relational aggression; it’s a form of bullying designed to harm another individual’s social relationships and status. Mean Girls are NOT just a middle school problem; women experience female relational aggression at all ages, and it’s devastating to be on the receiving end of bullying, intimidation, gossip, harassment, ostracizing, and verbal insults.

Midlife Mean Girls is a story about bitchy behavior, gaslighting, and friendships gone bad. It’s also a story about resilience, reinvention and making margaritas when the going gets tough.

book cover of midlife mean girls book by kristen coffield

Mean girls show up at all ages, and midlife is no exception.

Midlife Mean Girls can be on the sidelines at kids’ sporting events, in the office, and of course, online, where mean girls can create havoc at will. Most recently, the fascinating Gwyneth Paltrow ski accident trial created a social media frenzy taking apart everything she did, said, and wore. And let’s not overlook the “Gwyneth sometimes has bone broth for lunch” drama that played out in double frame on Instagram, where women by the thousands took to mocking the out-of-context comment.

This scintillating mean girl phenomenon is a type of behavior known as relational aggression; it’s a form of bullying designed to harm another individual’s social relationships and status. Mean Girls are NOT just a middle school problem; women experience female relational aggression at all ages, and it’s devastating to be on the receiving end of bullying, intimidation, gossip, harassment, ostracizing, and verbal insults.

Midlife Mean Girls is a story about bitchy behavior, gaslighting, and friendships gone bad. It’s also a story about resilience, reinvention and making margaritas when the going gets tough.

Midlife Mean Girls – an excerpt from Kristen’s upcoming novel…

When our daughter was in middle school, she had a gut-wrenching Queen Bees and Wannabe’s year.

One day she found herself sitting alone in the cafeteria. Her girl squad, the girls she usually ate lunch with, made an embarrassing public display of exorcising her from the “cool girl” table. This was an all-eyes-on-us dramatic performance to ensure the entire cafeteria didn’t miss a second of the humiliation. Her social life was toast, and life as she knew it was over. It was September of sixth grade.

graphic illustration of books lined up showing the spines

“Can’t you see the table is full” “there’s no more room,” “We’re saving this spot for Lexy” The girls who had been her gang, her besties, her closest friends, had shut her out. Everyone knew about it, and she had no idea why.

That was a horrible year. As the mother of this tormented child, I spent hours reassuring her there was life after middle school. But in my heart of hearts, I was dying. It felt like the most extended year of our lives. An emotional Tsunami of epic proportions ignited by a bunch of girls flaunting social power; hers was pubescent, mine menopausal. Traumatic for all members of our household, including the pets.

Tears were many; we considered different school options, I was ready to move. And then summer came, and as quickly as it began, it ended. We survived, but the scars linger. If you have ever been the victim of mean girls, the hurt simmers below the surface in our emotional connective tissue. Just thinking about the unjustness of it all has a PTSD-like effect. Better to simply pack it away and have a glass of wine.

To this day, she has no idea what happened. One of the worst parts of being the object of unrelenting mean girl torment is the mental anguish; you beat yourself up wondering what you did to deserve it. Was it a conversation you had with or about someone else? Should you have said yes when you said no? You wrack your brain trying to figure out precisely what stupid thing you could have done that brought this wrath upon you. Self-torment is as painful and damaging as public humiliation. No matter what age you are when you experience it, it is excruciatingly difficult to let go and move on.

I know only too well how horrible it is to be in a situation where one day all is well, and the next you are in social hell. Girls can be mean, and it isn’t exclusively limited to middle school.

“Can’t you see the table is full” “there’s no more room,” “We’re saving this spot for Lexy” The girls who had been her gang, her besties, her closest friends, had shut her out. Everyone knew about it, and she had no idea why.

That was a horrible year. As the mother of this tormented child, I spent hours reassuring her there was life after middle school. But in my heart of hearts, I was dying. It felt like the most extended year of our lives. An emotional Tsunami of epic proportions ignited by a bunch of girls flaunting social power; hers was pubescent, mine menopausal. Traumatic for all members of our household, including the pets.

Tears were many; we considered different school options, I was ready to move. And then summer came, and as quickly as it began, it ended. We survived, but the scars linger. If you have ever been the victim of mean girls, the hurt simmers below the surface in our emotional connective tissue. Just thinking about the unjustness of it all has a PTSD-like effect. Better to simply pack it away and have a glass of wine.

To this day, she has no idea what happened. One of the worst parts of being the object of unrelenting mean girl torment is the mental anguish; you beat yourself up wondering what you did to deserve it. Was it a conversation you had with or about someone else? Should you have said yes when you said no? You wrack your brain trying to figure out precisely what stupid thing you could have done that brought this wrath upon you. Self-torment is as painful and damaging as public humiliation. No matter what age you are when you experience it, it is excruciatingly difficult to let go and move on.

I know only too well how horrible it is to be in a situation where one day all is well, and the next you are in social hell. Girls can be mean, and it isn’t exclusively limited to middle school.

“What a great idea, JC! We can create a friendship and professional skills matching service for midlife women. It will be a place where women can post things they want to level-up in their lives and connect with others who have skills, services, or time to make it happen. It’s brilliant. This is buzz-worthy because no one is doing it, and we all need it. Once we roll it out, we can scale and monetize.”

This was the conversation that started it all. There is an entire world of women over forty trying to carve a space for themselves in the bustling land of midlife. Just type midlife into any social media channel and scroll away. It’s midlife everything. Podcasts, blogs, summits, support groups, digital magazines, you name it, and some intrepid woman is doing it.

Go to Instagram and look up Paulina Porizkova. She will undoubtedly be crying her eyes out and over-sharing her midlife feels in a way that is both compelling and repellant.

Everyone wants a part of this moneyed market. Elon Musk’s mom Maye wrote the bestseller, A Woman Makes A Plan. Joan Lunden authored her most recent book, Why Did I Come Into This Room?: A Candid Conversation About Aging. Pretty women with silver and grey hair have magnificent blogs and robust social media sites touting how much better life is when you break the conventions around aging. The market is bursting with uniquely formulated skin and hair care; there’s specialty makeup for mature faces, vagina rejuvenation devices, and mind-boggling amounts of diets, supplements, and programs for optimizing the “best” years of our lives.

When I first started blogging about fashion over fifty, it opened the doors to a magnificent midlife utopia. I was transported to a place of savvy, sexy, and intelligent female bloggers, experts, and public figures ready to make strategic connections and alliances. Women who were fueled with the knowledge that it’s now or never for that second act. It was a heady and exciting time. My calendar was filled with interviews, podcasts, and Zoom meetings with women from all over the world.

That’s how Marketing Midlife was launched. It was me and five other determined and fearless female bloggers. We shared a vision for connecting women across the globe with the skills, services, and the connections they needed and wanted to fuel their best lives. We thought it was brilliant. It felt fortuitous we had found each other and connected when we did. We were a tight-knit band of badasses, with a great idea, time to burn during a global pandemic, and a reach that spanned the globe.

We loved each other like sisters and professed we had each other’s backs. As it turns out, they were the best friends I never had.

Midlife Mean Girls

A new book By Kristen Coffield

Midlife Mean Girls

A new book By Kristen Coffield

Sign up below to receive alerts for Pre-Ordering the book!

Mean girls show up at all ages, and midlife is no exception.

Mean girls show up at all ages, and midlife is no exception.

Learn More About Kristen Coffield

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