The New Porsche
My grandfather loved telling stories about how things used to be. I loved listening to them.
Lately, I've found myself reflecting on childhood before smartphones, university before AI, and a world that felt just a little different.
And occasionally wondering: Am I becoming my grandfather?
I recently read an article arguing that visible abs and toned arms have become the new midlife status symbol.
What used to be the Porsche, expensive watch or designer handbag is now muscle.
The premise was simple. In a world of Ozempic, Botox, fillers, and med spas, many traditional signals of youth have become increasingly accessible. Being thin or wrinkle-free is no longer necessarily evidence of discipline or self-care. Wealth can be inherited. Weight can be medically assisted.
But strength is different.
Visible muscle is evidence of something earned: movement, nutrition, discipline and consistency over time.
More Than a Midlife Crisis?
In midlife, health, naturally, starts to feel less like a given and more like a form of wealth.
When you're twenty, good health is largely assumed. Most people have it. It doesn't differentiate you. By forty, fifty, and sixty, it starts to feel more precious. Energy becomes less abundant. Recovery takes longer. Disease becomes more visible.
Yet, none of that feels particularly surprising.
After all, wrestling with mortality is practically the definition of midlife.
Today, I value strength in a completely different way than I did twenty years ago. Not because I want to look a certain way, but because I want my body to remain capable.
I want to carry my children, ski with my grandchildren, hike mountains, and continue saying yes to adventures for decades to come.
When I see someone investing in their health, I don't see toned arms or visible abs. I see optionality. I see someone making decisions today that their future self will benefit from years from now.
The Symbol Changed
Of course my values have changed with age.
The interesting part was that I was happy the status symbol had changed too.
The Porsche was never really about the car. It was a way of communicating success, achievement, and status.
The article's argument is that visible muscle has become a symbol too.
Not because people care so deeply about toned triceps, but because they communicate something else: time, resources, self-discipline, and knowledge.
In other words, the competition isn't between the Porsche and health.
The competition is between different symbols of success.
And if success in midlife is increasingly represented by a healthy, capable body rather than a luxury purchase, I have to admit that feels like progress.
Is It Just Me?
But then I started wondering whether this was really a midlife phenomenon at all.
Or whether something broader was happening culturally.
When I was eighteen, twenty, even twenty-five, life was about exploration. The things I valued most were freedom, novelty, possibility, and adventure. I wanted to travel, meet interesting people, move cities, try new things, stay out too late, and say yes to opportunities that appeared unexpectedly.
The luxury I craved was possibility.
To me, status wasn't a handbag or a watch. It was the ability to travel, explore, say yes, and collect experiences.
At twenty, wealth was possibility.
Health mattered mostly because it enabled everything else. It allowed me to bike to work, run through the airport, dance, and stay up until three and wake up ready to brunch and do it again.
It wasn't the thing itself.
Today, I look at younger generations and wonder whether that is still true.
They drink less. They date less. They track their sleep and their steps. They know things about nutrition, fitness, and skin care that never crossed my mind at twenty.
At their age, I was far more interested in staying out until 2 a.m. than optimizing my REM sleep.
Are they still chasing the same version of wealth that I chased?
Or has health itself become a status symbol across generations?
Was I Born at Exactly the Right Time?
That question sent me down an entirely different rabbit hole.
Lately, I've found myself feeling unusually grateful for the era in which I grew up.
I grew up in a world that now feels like a narrow bridge between two eras.
My childhood was spent outside. Flashlight tag. Capture the flag. Riding bikes until dark and disappearing for hours with friends without anyone knowing exactly where we were.
As a teenager, I had independence and responsibility. I worked at the local pool to buy my plane ticket and visit my aunt every summer. I T9ed on my flip phone, waited for dial-up so I could AIM chat, and if a boyfriend wanted to talk to me, he had to call the house phone and ask for me. We “drove around” blasting rap and trying to figure out where the party was.
At university, I drank too much, pulled all-nighters, and wrote my own essays. Research meant sitting in a library surrounded by books. The honor code was simple: this is my own work. There was no AI. No outsourcing. No ambiguity.
Social media existed only at the edges of life. Facebook was for finding people you had already met, not performing for strangers. Dating apps arrived just after I met my husband.
And now, as a parent, I find myself living through another shift.
The tiger mom, helicopter parent, and even the gentle parent seem to be giving way to something else. More and more, the conversation is about independence—for ourselves and for our children. About being models, not martyrs.
About raising capable humans rather than perfectly curated résumés. About investing in experiences and connection rather than activities designed to optimize a future university application.
Whether or not we're succeeding is another question entirely. But the direction of the conversation feels different.
And now, entering midlife, I find myself in a culture that seems increasingly interested in strength, movement, and health.
Conveniently, those are the things I care about too.
Which raises an uncomfortable question.
Am I observing genuine cultural shifts?
Or am I simply telling myself a story?
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Psychologists have a name for this tendency: narrative identity.
Narrative identity is the story we construct about who we are and how we became that person.
Human beings are remarkably good storytellers.
We take the messy, unpredictable events of our lives and weave them into narratives that make sense.
Perhaps I am simply constructing a story in which I grew up at exactly the right time.
A story where I experienced childhood before smartphones, adolescence before social media, young adulthood before dating apps, and parenthood during a period when independence, connection, and modeling normal, human behaviour seem to matter more than perfection.
A story where the values I happen to hold today are becoming more culturally visible and rewarded.
Whether that reflects a societal shift or simply the story I am telling myself about where I ended up, I'm not entirely sure.
But perhaps that isn't the point.
Either way, I find myself grateful.
Grateful for the era I grew up in, and grateful that if society is going to choose a midlife status symbol, it might be something that helps us stay strong enough to fully participate in our lives.
At twenty, wealth was possibility.
Today, health is possibility.
Yours,
Erica
P.S. There are still a few spots left for our live masterclass on The Female Brain in Geneva on June 23rd, more info here!
