50 years previous is a jubilant age! » | EUROtoday
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EHe arrives 5 minutes late, apologizes flatly, locations his tiny purse on the desk and orders a do-it-yourself lemonade. We are at Jeannette's (Paris 14e), a café that resembles it, stylish however not an excessive amount of, the place you possibly can eat properly and chat in peace. Pink cashmere sweater, floral tattoo on the forearm and spiky blond hair, Maïtena Biraben nonetheless has the look of the nice pal, pure, smiling and mischievous, the identical one which we left on the comfy sofas of Kindergartens (on France 5), twenty years in the past.
Relaxed, cool, at 56? Yes, however “perhaps not calm, let’s not exaggerate anything”, she warns in her guide The Invisible Woman (Grasset). Because, make no mistake, Maïtena Biraben may also be critical, offended and even rebellious. And there she is. At 56, she determined to “change the world”. Just that !
In entrance of us, she repeats how “unbearable” it’s for her to be assigned to be younger and fairly: “But why shouldn’t I grow old? Why do people tell me what creams, what facelifts, what techniques I should use? Why is a 50 year old man the sum of everything he has learned, understood, gained, lost, gained, explored? And why, for a woman, would this be the end of everything we have been? » The former presenter of The Morning and Grand Journal on Canal+ is fed up with the “private story” that we inform about girls with out durations. “Without desire, without life”? “Everything about me is with it!” » she retorts.
And she just isn’t afraid to speak about herself to guide this new struggle in opposition to the invisibility of menopausal girls. The ex-single mom, married thrice, on the head of a blended household, the girl who hates doing house responsibilities and sports activities has all the time relied on work to flourish earlier than being let go from Canal+, simply earlier than his… 50 years.
“I fought against assignment all my life only to find myself, at the end of my period, assigned again, but, this time, to…disappear! » Impossible for someone who loathes “That’s how it is!” » to resign oneself to accepting the unacceptable. Yes, she has sagging breasts, eyelids that droop – “a little” –, neck wrinkles that she compares to “mountain gullies”, and, sure, like her mom earlier than her, she watches amplify the hairs of the chin… But she additionally has a “wealth of knowledge”, “desires”, “peach”, “a used and increased life force” and… “a freedom, like never before! “. Of course, she skilled the blues, reminiscence lapses, fatigue, but in addition funnier moments like, throughout perimenopause, the one the place she felt a “crazy libido”: “I only had one want, kiss! I couldn't reason anymore… I said to myself: “Is this what being a boy is? Hell!” »
Middle age, “an adolescent crisis equipped with a brain”
So why not speak about it and share it with different girls? “I say: ladies, do not be afraid, do not be sad! At 50, we lose, but we also gain, time for ourselves and the freedom to be ourselves, finally… It's a jubilant age! » What if middle age was ultimately just an “adolescent crisis equipped with a brain”?
Maïtena Biraben intends to deconstruct the parable of the menopausal lady who is nice for throwing away, simply as she had, originally of the 2000s, questioned the mannequin of the proper mom in Kindergartens. With her accomplice, producer Alexandra Crucq, she is launching a brand new 100% digital media, Ladies, to deal with girls over 45 years previous. Strangely, all of the TV channels to which the 2 girls proposed their speak challenge initially refused.
“We’re talking about 9 million people, hello, what! » the producer takes offense, repeating Nabila's gimmick. These 9 million women are the driving forces of the nation! They work, they produce GDP, they raise, or have raised, children, they have social relationships, they are an economic force, they vote… And no one speaks to them! Can you tell me about a bill that concerns women between 45 and 65? Apart from the pension reform, where we understood that they were losing…” Maïtena Biraben feels invested with a mission: to vary the outlook on this quarter of the French inhabitants (“I participated in this outlook ”, she confesses), and attempt to change the political discourse. “Society has changed, people are dying later and later. We're going to die, you and I, we'll be around 90 years old, that's in 40 years! It’s going to be a long time to be “old” for 40 years…”
We knew the foundations, guidelines that weren’t favorable to us…
The TV host, who has had a profession worthy of that of a person (specifically by combating to acquire the identical salaries), has no regrets. “I’ve had a fabulous professional life, really. » She only had “power jobs” and he or she earned some huge cash. “But it was another world. » The world before MeToo. “We knew the rules, rules that were not favorable to us…” This motion to free speech put sure girls of her era, she says, in a sort of “unease”, a sense near “guilt “. Those who were called “cads” in his time are considered “delinquents” today. ” And that's good ! » she believes.
His ultimate Sunday: “I get up, I relax, I do things slowly… I go to the market around 10 a.m., I cook. Around 1 p.m., there are 7, 8, 10, 12 people arriving at the house. I put everything on the table (tuna tartare, pâtés, salads, cheese, bread, etc.), everyone helps themselves. We're outside, the weather is nice. We listen to music, we lie down in the grass, we drink: I love drinking in the afternoon! Around 7 p.m., we finish the leftovers. And around 11 p.m., everyone goes to bed! »
“I deeply believe that if the generation of 20-30 year olds can move things forward today, it’s because we held on. We did not sail with the same weapons. We had to make do. They do it against it, or without it, but it's all of us who make that change. MeToo is a temporality, but it belongs to women. In any case, I take credit for it. » On the other hand, don't count on her to throw out names: “I don't like manhunts. » And to explain: “I think that it is a society which is guilty, not single individuals. Afterwards, in this society, there were also perverts and perfectly reprehensible delinquents. »
Single mother and powerful woman
For her part, if the victim is not her “kind of beauty”, she still denounces in The Invisible Woman the “crass and vulgar sexism” that she confronted throughout her final 12 months at Canal. She hasn't been on TV since. “By choice,” she writes. By harm too, if I'm trustworthy. » She is in truth popping out of an extended authorized battle in opposition to her former employer, who dismissed her in the summertime of 2016, “without real and serious cause”. “For seven years, I faced an Ancien Régime type paterfamilias alpha male who took me for a fool with great contempt and I didn't like it. » The Court of Cassation ruled in 2023, ordering the audiovisual group to pay more than 3.4 million euros in compensation.
At 50, she began a new life and created her company, Mesdames Productions. And at 56, she launched her digital media. That's his official age. In her head, Maïtena “blocked” on her 28 years, the age at which she had her first youngster. “They say I’m 56 years old. OK, if you want! I'm 28 years old, I know it! » The age when, and this was not expected, she had to raise her son alone. “It’s the saddest thing in the world. It is very violent. » We had to manage everything at once: work, of course, ten to twelve hours a day, and taking care of “the little guy”. It was the time of Kindergartens, a godsend for the younger presenter, who had began her profession in Switzerland. “I was all alone, I had no one to talk to. And I am offered to Kindergartens to have all the earth specialists to talk about my son, it was great! »
People often say that I have no filter, even though I am an extremely thoughtful person.
In her forties, while she is one of the rare women to present a morning show, she is still “worried”, she says immediately whereas sipping her lemonade. “I’m going to make some noise!” » she warns, politely, earlier than sucking up the final drops of juice together with her straw. “Often, people say that I have no filter, even though I am someone who is extremely thoughtful, very cerebral. But I have no limits, I am a very free person! » She pauses, laughs at herself: “This sentence is crazy…”
Indeed, it’s not possible to label it, it’s “too distorted” (sic). Since her childhood, the one who grew up within the Landes between “four powerful brothers”, a “stiff father” and a “glorious and unhappy mother at home” lucidly noticed the nice circus and social attributions. The teenager in Kickers and shapeless sweaters solely considered getting out of this world with out anyplace else. “My brothers, they have always been themselves before being men. I was the daughter of, the sister of, the wife of… I had to no longer have a role – professional and biological – to become who I am. »
At the age of 50, she can finally say “no” with a smile. “I too was crushed by society’s narrative. It takes strength to get out of where we are. » From now on, she lives in her world, which sometimes has the air of the world of “Oui-Oui”. And she doesn't care: “I don't have a style for unhappiness, I wish to have fun, to hug individuals. It's the privilege of age, I need variety individuals in my life, consideration, laughter, pleasure, sharing… We're all going to die ultimately! »
Every Sunday, Point has Meeting with well-known and lesser-known personalities from the world of tradition, tv, cinema, gastronomy, sport, enterprise… They participate within the recreation of intimate interviews, telling us about their journey, generally strewn with pitfalls, give us some confidences and provides us their imaginative and prescient of society.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/rendez-vous-avec-maitena-biraben-mesdames-n-ayez-pas-peur-50-ans-c-est-un-age-jubilatoire-04-05-2024-2559427_23.php