I’m turning 40 next year.
And while I’m looking forward to being 40 and fabulous, every now and then I feel a flicker of panic as I wonder how I can possibly be 40?
It would be disingenuous of me to pretend I never worry about getting older. We live in a world that constantly tells women that youth is our greatest asset and that growing older is something to fight, reverse or disguise, so even when you know better, those messages can be difficult to completely escape.
But when I compare it to how I felt turning 30, it’s a very different feeling.
As I approached my 30th birthday, I had what can only be described as a full-blown breakdown. I genuinely thought my life was over. I was single, questioning my career, convinced I was running out of time and mourning the end of youth, coolness and opportunity as though I was about to be put out to pasture.
I’d absorbed so many ideas about what a successful woman was supposed to have achieved by 30 that I felt like I was failing.
© WireImageI wasn’t married, I didn’t have children and I wasn’t where I thought I should be, at least not according to the invisible checklist women are still encouraged to measure themselves against.
Looking back, I wasn’t behind. I was trying to live up to a set of outdated expectations that tell women we’re only successful if we’ve ticked certain boxes by a certain age.
Now, nearly a decade later, I can see how much energy I wasted worrying about things that didn’t deserve so much space in my head.
In fact, one of the things that makes me laugh most is that back then I genuinely worried I was becoming irrelevant, while today I’m still fronting lingerie and swimwear campaigns. It turns out women in their thirties, forties and beyond still buy lingerie and swimwear, still want to feel confident and still deserve to see themselves represented. Who knew?
That’s one of the reasons I wanted to work with Pour Moi on their Designed For Me, Designed For Real Life campaign. The older I’ve got, the more I’ve realised that confidence isn’t about perfection. It’s about feeling comfortable, supported and at home in your own skin. Yet so much of the messaging aimed at women tells us we need to earn confidence by changing ourselves first.
Looking back, I barely recognise the woman I was at 29. Not because I magically became confident with age, but because I’ve spent the last decade questioning so many of the things I thought were true.
Confidence redefined
The older I’ve got, the more I’ve realised that confidence isn’t something you find. It’s something you rebuild after years of being told you’re too much, not enough, too loud, too ambitious, too emotional, too old, too sexual or not sexual enough.
When I look at my daughter, I see a little girl who takes up space unapologetically, says exactly what she thinks and looks at herself with wonder rather than criticism. She doesn’t spend her mornings worrying about wrinkles, cellulite, whether she’s attractive enough or whether everyone likes her.
A Pour Moi survey showed that 30% of women aged between 30-60 said their confidence peaked in their twenties. But I don’t think women lose confidence because they get older. I think we’re born confident and then life slowly chips away at it.
Diet culture tells us our bodies are projects that need fixing. Beauty standards tell us we’re only valuable while we’re young. Social media encourages comparison. Relationships can knock our confidence. Patriarchy teaches us to be agreeable, accommodating and grateful for whatever space we’re given.
Little by little, we absorb the message that we’re either too much or not quite enough.
But if we can learn it, we can unlearn it.
As I approach 40, these are some of the things I stopped worrying about during my thirties and the beliefs I’m still working on unlearning.
I stopped believing my body needed fixing
For years I thought confidence was waiting for me on the other side of a smaller dress size.
If I could just lose a bit more weight, restrict myself enough and exercise hard enough, then I’d finally feel comfortable in myself.
The problem is that the goalposts never stop moving. There is always another beauty trend, another thing we’re supposed to fix and another reason to feel like we’re falling short.
I spent far too much of my life viewing my body as a project rather than the incredible thing that carries me through life. Like so many women, I believed I needed to shrink to the smallest version of myself and spent years seeing food as something to control and exercise as punishment.
But confidence isn’t a dress size. It isn’t a number on a scale. It isn’t whether you’ve got stretch marks, cellulite, wrinkles or scars.
One of the biggest shifts for me has been moving away from asking, “How does my body look?” and towards asking, “How does my body feel?” Am I healthy? Am I strong? Am I comfortable?
I got to the most shrunken version of myself only to discover that confidence wasn’t there waiting for me.
What I’ve learned instead is that confidence comes from feeling comfortable being yourself and recognising that your value has never been tied to your appearance.
And sometimes that starts with something as simple as wearing clothes, swimwear or lingerie that actually fit your body properly, rather than spending your life trying to force your body to fit somebody else’s ideal. The importance of a good fit is essential, another reason I wanted to work with Pour Moi, as their products are designed with every body in mind, ensuring they are comfortable and supported, knowing they have found the perfect fit.
I stopped putting being liked above my own boundaries
I spent so much of my twenties worrying about whether people liked me that I often forgot to ask whether I liked them.
I wanted to be easy-going, accommodating and nice, and more often than not that came at the expense of myself. I worried about disappointing people, said yes when I wanted to say no and spent far too much energy trying to avoid conflict because women are often taught that being liked is more important than being honest.
One of the greatest gifts of getting older has been realising that boundaries aren’t selfish. They’re necessary.
Saying no doesn’t make you difficult and disagreeing with people doesn’t make you unlikeable.
The people who genuinely care about you will survive hearing the word no.
Ironically, the more I’ve stopped trying to be everything to everyone, the happier I’ve become.
I stopped worrying whether men liked me and started asking whether I liked them
For years, dating felt like an audition.
I think so many women are taught that being chosen is the prize, so we spend years worrying about whether we’re attractive enough, successful enough, interesting enough or easy-going enough to deserve love. We analyse texts, replay conversations and convince ourselves that if we were just a little prettier, thinner, funnier or less demanding, we’d finally find the relationship we’re searching for.
What I eventually realised is that I was asking the wrong question.
Instead of worrying whether men liked me, I started asking whether I actually liked them. Did they make me laugh? Did they respect me? Did they share my values? Did they make my life bigger, lighter and happier?
It sounds simple, but it completely changed the way I approached relationships.
Meeting Tommy wasn’t the result of lowering my standards or panicking because my biological clock was ticking. If anything, it happened because I finally understood what I wanted and what I was no longer willing to settle for.
One of the biggest things my thirties taught me is that being chosen isn’t the goal. Choosing yourself is.
I stopped apologising for being feminine
I’ve worked in television for a long time now and one thing I’ve noticed is how often women’s intelligence is questioned. I’ve been called a bimbo more times than I can count and, apparently, having blonde hair, liking fashion and wearing makeup means your opinions should somehow carry less weight.
It’s absurd when you say it out loud, but so many of us grow up absorbing the message that femininity and intelligence sit at opposite ends of a spectrum, and that if you’re interested in fashion, beauty or lingerie you can’t also be thoughtful, ambitious or politically engaged.
Yet I’ve spent most of my adult life proving those things can happily coexist.
I can care about politics and love fashion. I can speak about feminism and enjoy feeling glamorous. I can wear beautiful lingerie, pose in my swimwear and still be taken seriously.
We don’t have to choose between beauty and brains, and we certainly don’t need to adopt traditionally masculine traits to be taken seriously. If society struggles to take feminine women seriously, that’s a sexism problem, not a me problem.
In many ways, that’s exactly what inspired me to write Bimbo. I became fascinated by how often women are told they must choose between being attractive and intelligent, feminine and powerful, sexy and respected, when men are rarely asked to make the same choice.
The problem was never femininity. It was the assumptions people make about it.
I stopped comparing my timeline to everybody else’s
This is probably the biggest one because I think this is a conversation that dominates women’s thoughts and conversations.
When I turned 30, I genuinely felt like I was running out of time. I was single and convinced I was somehow behind, while everybody else seemed to be getting married, buying houses and having babies.
Looking back, what strikes me now isn’t that I was behind. It’s how much energy I wasted worrying that I was.
I think women are put in an impossible position. We’re told to prioritise our careers, but also reminded that our fertility has a deadline. We’re told to wait for the right partner, but also warned not to leave it too late.
The reality is that life doesn’t unfold according to a schedule.
What I’ve come to realise is that there isn’t one version of a happy ending. For some women, happiness is a house full of children. For others, it’s a child-free life filled with freedom, travel, friendships, work they love or passions that light them up. Some women meet the love of their life at 22, others at 42, and some choose not to centre romantic relationships at all. All of those lives are equally valid.
Life also isn’t something you can simply plan into existence. You can’t click your fingers and meet the love of your life. Some women desperately want children and don’t have them. Some women don’t want children at all. Some become mothers at twenty-two. Some at forty-two. Some never do.
What I know for certain is that I’m grateful for my single years.
At the time, I viewed them as evidence that something was missing, but now I see them as some of the most important years of my life. They were the years I travelled alone, built my career, made mistakes, found my voice and learned who I was outside of a relationship.
Society often treats singlehood as a waiting room, as though real life begins when someone chooses you, but some of the happiest and most formative years of my life happened before I met Tommy.
Eventually I met my partner, became a mum, built a career I love and wrote a bestselling book, but none of those things happened according to the timeline I imagined for myself at thirty.
The older I get, the more convinced I am that women aren’t failing these expectations.
The expectations are failing women.
What I’m taking into my forties
If my thirties taught me anything, it’s that most of the things I worried about never happened.
My career didn’t disappear, opportunities didn’t dry up, and I didn’t become “irrelevant”. In fact, some of the best things in my life happened after 30: magazine covers, fronting lingerie and swimwear campaigns, writing a number 1 bestselling book but most importantly: finding inner peace!
So as I approach 40, what I’m hoping to take with me isn’t perfection or certainty. It’s the knowledge that life is far too short to spend it shrinking myself, waiting for approval or believing I need fixing.
I want to keep taking up space and using my voice and keep fighting so my daughter doesn’t have to battle these things.
I want to keep wearing the lingerie, getting in the swimwear, and ageing disgracefully. Because I refuse to become invisible because our worth is not tied to youth.
And if there’s one thing I hope for my daughter, it’s that she figures all of this out much faster than I did.
I’m sure she will because there will always be a copy of Bimbo waiting for her.
Pour Moi launch Ashley as their new brand ambassador on the 2nd June 2026. Visit here for more information on Ashley James x Pour Moi ‘Designed For Me, Designed For Real Life' campaign.
