In the last few years middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings: the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused. In Hags, Victoria Smith asks why women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme – care work, beauty, violence, political organisation, sex – explored in relation to middle-aged women’s beliefs, bodies, histories and choices. Smith traces the attitudes she describes through history, exploring the reasons why this type of misogyny is so very now.