Margaret, or Maggie as her friends called her, was a vibrant woman in her early 50s. Her life had been a beautiful tapestry of love, loss, and self-discovery. After a fulfilling career as a teacher and raising two wonderful children, Maggie found herself at a crossroads. Her husband had passed away a few years prior, and her children had long since moved out to start their own families.

The 1970s and 80s were slightly kinder but still cruel. The "hag horror" subgenre (films like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ) framed aging women as mentally unstable, tragic monsters. By the 1990s, the problem had a name: the "Hollywood age gap." A 2020 study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that in the top 100 grossing films, only 13% of female leads were over 45. For men, that number was 37%.