Verity Johnson: Why women are so scared of growing old

Young people grappling with a sense of built in obsolescence. Photo / Thinkstock

Our eyes met across the club.

I couldn't move. Was this cosmic sexual energy pulling us together in the celestial ballet of love? Or was it the rum and Coke on the floor gluing my foot down?

I didn't get a chance to investigate because before I could, they lurched into me and screeched "beeeeetch!" (Australian for "bitch".) "Beetch get outda way!" she said, grasping a girlfriend's hair for support. "Yeah," cackled the girlfriend, "and isn't it past your bedtime?" Me and my girlfriends mentioned menopause, they alluded to hookers and missing skirts and soon there was bloody mary on the floor.

Welcome to da club, yo. This grisly scene is what often happens to me when my 20 something girlfriends meet a group of 40 something women on the town. But the most recent time it happened was a little different.

I was dancing in a cage in a club and another woman entered. (Which sounds like the start of a porno when it's really the start of another depressing column on being a woman.) We looked at each other. She was in her late 30s, I'm in my early 20s, but her face had exactly the same expression as mine. Make-up and hopelessness - mixed with vodka tonic.

Why were we both dancing in this ridiculous cage, in this ridiculous club, to this ridiculous music? We were both afraid of our futures.

She was afraid she was past it. She was afraid she'd used up her sexual worth, her power, and her sense of purpose and achievement. She was dancing to prove she still had it, dammit. I was afraid that I had only limited time left of worth, power and purpose. I was afraid of getting older. So I was dancing to stop my inevitable slide into irrelevancy, dammit.

We were both grappling with a sense of built in obsolescence. And so we got in a cage. All in all it's one of the saner things I've done because of this fear.

This is a fear that hangs over your life as a 20 something. You think when you hit 30 you've lost it.

What's 'it'? Everything. Allure, power, purpose, fun ... it's deeper than a fear of being old and crinkly. It's a fear that your humanity, your soul, is irrelevant when you lose your baby-faced zing. So you better have fun now and damn well enjoy it because you're on borrowed time.

It's the flip side of the conversation you often hear from older women about feeling invisible. We don't feel invisible. But we know we will soon. So we panic.

I'm not saying every girl who goes out, acts up, sleeps around, flirts crazily, spends madly or lives wildly is solely motivated by this fear. Of course it's fun too. But the relentlessness with which we pursue fun still often stems from a feeling that this is it - so make the most of it.

It's that pesky omnipresent cult of youth. It's everywhere. It's all through the media where shows like X Factor tenaciously link youth to dreams. It's in young people, like me, being given social media jobs precisely because I'm young. It's in the sinking feeling you get when public figures, especially women, are rarely older than 50. And if they are, they're subject to intense media scrutiny like when prominent UK historian Mary Beard was torn down for not being young and perky enough on TV.

We link youth to power in a way that makes anyone over 30 feel as relevant as a VCR. We link youth to innovation, vision, and especially for women, to sex appeal. And this gives young people a lot of power.

Of course that's great in some senses. But it also makes you terrified of leaving it. What happens then ... DIY?

And God knows what it does to you when you actually have left it.

It's bad enough waiting for it to happen, let alone having it happen.

I'm holding out hope that it's not actually going to occur. I'm hoping that 30 somethings will gather us 20 somethings together, Nutella and breadsticks supplied, and reassure us that actually it's going to be ok. We will get older and still feel relevant and capable and loved.

Back in the cage though, I'm staring into the face of the other trapped woman, and I'm not seeing anything hopeful in it.

I'm not seeing anything to be honest because the sweat has formed a paste with my eye shadow and everything's gone a suspicious purple. But if I was one of the people below, I think I'd see two scared women dancing like something is driving them batshit crazy.