Victoria Smith joined Hadley Freeman and Sonia Sodha at The Tabernacle on the 21st March for Intelligence Squared, to talk abut Hags: The demonisation of Middle-Aged Women.

The discussion explored why women who have the temerity to exist beyond the age at which they are conventionally deemed desirable to men are seen as superfluous to society; and they looked for solutions that can benefit all women – whether they are hags or hags-in-waiting…

Smith’s Hags was shortlisted for The Nero Prize 2023. In Hags, Smith explores what it is about women in middle-age and beyond that seems to enrage – almost everyone? Hags asks the question why these women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme – care work, beauty, violence, political organisation, sex – and explores it in relation to middle-aged women’s beliefs, bodies and choices.

Watch Victoria Smith on Intelligence Squared here.