Fucking Fabulous #1: Off Kilter

Photo: Robert E. Rutledge

I wrote a book in five and a half weeks and immediately after I finished it, I went to urgent care with what I thought was a concussion that turned out to be vertigo.

I was ecstatic: I finished another book! Fuck yeah, me!

I was in full panic mode: what the fuck is that see saw in my head and how do I get off it?!

That is the Fucking Fabulous of the title of this series.

I am turning 59 this summer. Approaching the border between the decades as I am, I am writing letters of love and farewell to my fucking fabulous fifties. They have been magnificent. I have become magnificent over this decade. Yes. Here I stand, fucking fabulous and magnificent. That “fucking” is a deceptive fucker though; both an exclamation of emphasis and a qualifier. It is the fucking of the see saw in my head that tempered my excitement at finishing a book in five and a half weeks.

I began my fifties by beating up a man who sexually assaulted me in a club. It was magnificent. It wasn’t planned. I didn’t think “I will mark my fifties by beating up a man.” It was fucking fabulous to finally and with clarity beat up one of the endless array of men who have touched my body without my consent.

Approaching the border between the decades as I am, I am writing letters of love and farewell to my fucking fabulous fifties. They have been magnificent. I have become magnificent over this decade.

I published two of my-so-far three books in my fifties and I’m about to publish another before crossing over into sixty. Each book has tantalised me with immortality and been a reminder that I will die. It was in my fifties that I truly began to grasp that I will die. And I wonder how much of the volcanic eruptions of anxiety that have splattered across the magnificence of this decade have been triggered by that knowledge, growing and urgent, that I will die.

What is that see saw in my head and how do I fucking get off it?

How much time do I have to become brilliant?

Each book, as proud as I am of it, incarnates the gap between what I know I’m capable of and what I have achieved on the pages. How much time do I have to become brilliant? I want to translate the magnificence I feel in my fifties into a brilliance that my ghost can point to and say “I was fucking fabulous.”

There’s a Tom Ford fragrance called Fucking Fabulous. When I spray just the right amount, it is beguiling and effortlessly sexy. Too many spritzes and I want to peel my skin off.

I lost the ability to lie to myself in my fifties. That’s what makes me magnificent. I don’t like everything about myself. I could no longer refuse to see what I disliked about myself in my fifties in the same way I understood I was going to die. To deny either is childish and I’m fucking fabulous.

I lost the ability to lie to myself in my fifties. That’s what makes me magnificent.

Once upon a time, back in the 90s when I was resigning in anger at my boss at a full time job I had at the time, he told me that I wasn’t as important as I thought I was. Minutes later, when I handed him my resignation letter, he urged me to stay.

So I guess I was as important as I thought I was. That was back in my thirties. I am now almost double that age and I am magnificent. I have been asked “Who do you think you are?” enough times to know that I am a FEMINIST GIANT, hence the name of this newsletter.

These letters of love and farewell to my fifties are my conversation with brilliance and death. Having vertigo is fucking terrifying. These letters connect the dots between fabulous and terrifying, fucking always.

Maudlin makes me want to peel my skin off. It is not my style. Beguiling and effortlessly sexy are.

These letters of love and farewell to my fifties are my conversation with brilliance and death.

A vestibular therapist called Dr. Matthew Rome at Equilibrium Physical Therapy treated my vertigo with maneuvers that returned to the ear canal crystals that migrated out and caused me to feel there was a see-saw in my head and that the room was spinning. For a month after, I felt off kilter, still. The dictionary definition of “off kilter” is “not in perfect balance: a bit askew,” and also “eccentric, unconventional.”

My letters of love and farewell to my fifties aim to be just that: a bit askew and eccentric.

Do I think I’m more important than I am?

Who are you calling fucking fabulous!

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her latest book is an anthology on menopause she edited called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.

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