Every midlife woman I know right now is hooked on Vladimir, the new Netflix erotic comedy-drama in which a smoking hot Rachel Weisz is obsessed with her younger colleague, Leo Woodall (also hot, just not as hot as her, if we’re honest).

It’s sexy. It’s unhinged. It’s escapist. It’s absolutely nothing like the lives of most midlife women… except, what if it actually is? What if our inner worlds sometimes look a little bit like Rachel’s?

Let’s get one thing straight: 56-year-old Rachel’s character (who has no name, so perhaps it’s yours) is definitely at the more extreme end of midlife whims and desires. Without wishing to spoiler the show, her life is in freefall and her sex drive has gone through the roof — and these two events are not unrelated.

But in my own communities of midlife women, there are varying degrees of, if not unhinged, certainly surprising, behaviour going on at all times. There are women randomly getting their first tattoos (“I just always fancied one”), women dating women for the first time (“I just always fancied one”?), women going to sex parties (you get the idea) and many more who are idly contemplating blowing up their lives in one way or another, whether it’s leaving a long-established career or an even longer-established marriage.

And this is just in the year 6 mums chat.

But whether we’re taking our midlife whims to HR, Bumble or the tattoo studio, all of us, like Rachel’s character, are basically saying the same thing: we are here, we are hot, we are alive, we are not invisible and we want to make the most of it.

© Courtesy of Netflix
Rachel Weisz and Leo Woodall in Vladimir

Vladimir isn’t the only cultural midlife moment like this. Nicole Kidman, 58, went down a similarly dark, sexy road opposite Harris Dickinson, 29, in 2024’s Babygirl and Miranda July’s incredible, unashamedly bonkers novel All Fours became the most talked-about book of the last couple of years for what New York magazine described as its “radical depiction” of perimenopause and the “re-wilding” of women in midlife.

Plus, underground Substack newsletters like the deliciously juicy To The Bed (a divorced 40-something New Yorker who anonymously blogs about her adventures on dating and hook-up apps) are shared between part-disillusioned, part-curious women on dark social. In my divorce group chat (yep, that’s a thing! Still married? You can’t sit with us), we swap memes, Reels and articles about midlife sex and dating that we would never share publicly on Instagram, where we’re mostly masquerading as nice, smiley, wholesome activewear mums.

Is the midlife sex boom down to HRT and GLP-1s?

And my theory about this midlife explosion? In the same way that in the 1960s, the advent of the contraceptive pill induced a sexual revolution, in the 2020s a few other medical advances have given many midlife women’s sex lives and general self-confidence a rip-roaring second act.

First, there’s HRT. While my mother’s generation were often cautious about treating their menopause symptoms via hormone replacement therapy due to fears around breast cancer (more recent research suggests the risks were overstated), in 2024 2.6 million patients were prescribed it — a 12% increase from the previous year. Not only can supplementing with oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone boost women’s sex drives, but HRT can also, even more powerfully, boost mental health due to helping with symptoms like anxiety, insomnia and rage. The result? A generation of women who are potentially happier and, yep, hornier than the ones before.

The final tool for many women in the midst of a powerful midlife revolution? The boom of the cosmetic treatment and wellness industry. Those communities of midlife women aren’t just chatting over WhatsApp about their sex lives, they’re also swapping tips on Botox practitioners, red light masks and collagen supplements. Even a decade ago, many of these tweakments and routines felt extreme, but these days they’re mainstream, with the market anticipated to grow a further 15.4% by 2030.

Presenting our best selves

And who’s bang in the middle of that market? Midlife women, of course. While personally I’m fed up with being bombarded by Instagram ads telling me about all the urgent improvements I should make to my eyebags, I totally get the appeal: in a world where we’re constantly told that we’re invisible once we’re past 40, if every fibre of our being is telling us that, actually, we want to be seen and heard if you don’t mind, we’ll do what we can to present our best selves to the world.

It’s not about looking younger — it’s about putting ourselves out there as confidently as we can and reclaiming our power, a power that we might have felt like we lost, in mind and body, due to pregnancy, motherhood, perimenopause symptoms, challenging job markets, pandemics, relationship breakdowns or all of the above. If we’re privileged enough to have access to the tools that can provide a shortcut to confidence, we’re going to eagerly seize them and throw ourselves into an era that’s not about looking and feeling good for our age, it’s just about looking and feeling good.

© Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
Rachel Weisz and John Slattery in Vladimir

The women writing, producing, commissioning and starring in works of art like Vladimir have found their power and know that midlife doesn’t have to be all doom and domesticity. At this point in our lives, we know that the hard stuff is going to happen anyway, so we might as well enjoy the more fun, frivolous bits — and if it’s now reflected back at us on screen, instead of being whispered about? Even better.

While most of us don’t look like Rachel Weisz and most of us (hopefully) aren’t quite as obsessive and extreme as her intoxicating character, seeing a little bit of our baddest self in her feels delicious. But don’t tell. It’s fun to have a dirty little secret from our Gen Z and younger millennial friends while they spend their evenings snuggling on the sofa with their cute boyfriends and even cuter dogs. Let them believe we’re just popping our reading glasses on to admire our mate’s kitchen reno; we know we’re also giving feedback on her Feeld profile.