A scene in the recent Netflix series “On the Verge,” about four female friends in Los Angeles staring down midlife, shows one of them — Yasmin — being interviewed for a job by a much younger woman. As the interview disintegrates, Yasmin gets visibly upset and clutches her chest.
“Are you having a heart attack?” her interviewer asks.
“I’m 46, not 96!” Yasmin yells back.
It’s funny despite, or maybe in spite of, being true. As youth recedes, so too, can a woman’s currency, in the workplace and in society. Historically, women of a 40-plus vintage were often left to navigate these midlife transitions feeling alienated and adrift.
Then technology came along, like Facebook Groups in 2010, and tapped into the potential of creating private online spaces where likeminded individuals could bond. Suddenly, women going through midlife had the opportunity to form their own bespoke collectives and connect with kindred spirits to crowdsource questions about careers, menopause, sex, money, marriage, and everything in between.
Now, a decade later, there are social networking apps and platforms for people of every conceivable bent, and one of them has landed on the East End.
Revel, “a community of women fully embracing the next chapter, and creating a fresh approach to our 40s, 50s, and beyond,” according to its website (hellorevel.com), launched Hamptons Revelers last week. It’s a group within the platform specifically for female East Enders of a certain age, to connect and participate in events such as ice skating at the Bucksill Winter Club, or a walk along Gerard Drive. On Feb. 20, the East Hampton Trails Preservation Society will partner with Hamptons Revelers to lead a two-mile hike through the Brooks-Park property in Springs and discuss the Abstract Expressionists’ lives and work. There’s also a slew of virtual events, open to members everywhere, from book clubs, to meditation classes, financial advice, sex talks, travel tips, cooking, and writing classes. Membership is currently free.
Hamptons Revelers is helmed by Nina Lorez Collins, a part-time Springs resident, Barnard College alumna, former literary agent, mother of four 20-somethings, and the current chairperson of the board of trustees at the Brooklyn Public Library. In 2015, Ms. Collins started the Woolfer, originally as a Facebook Group called, What Would Virginia Woolf Do?, that grew into one the largest social connection groups for women over 40 in the New York area. It was born from her need to find answers about the changes she was experiencing as she hit perimenopause at 46.
“I wanted to talk to women about it and I didn’t find any spaces to do that,” she said recently over Zoom. “So I just created one, not expecting it to strike a chord.” It did, attracting some 32,000 members nationwide at its peak, and led to publishing her memoir, “What Would Virginia Woolf Do?: And Other Questions I Ask Myself as I Attempt to Age Without Apology,” as well as producing a podcast, “(R)aging Gracefully.”
Last year, the Woolfer was acquired by Revel, a West Coast-based community and event platform for midlife women, founded by Lisa Marrone and Alexa Wahr — Harvard Business School graduates who are still in their early 30s.
“I actually wrote [Lisa and Alexa] an email, a really ballsy email a couple of days after I met them,” Ms. Collins said. “I told them, ‘I think you guys should buy me. And if you don’t, then maybe I should raise money and buy you. Because there are a lot of people now in the menopause space, but no one is really killing it. And for that to happen, we need mass,’ “ she said. The merger happened with a few tweaks. For instance, Ms. Collins pointed out that Revel, which focused on events, was missing the ability for women to talk to each other in groups, like in Facebook Groups. “That’s the engine behind what I built. I can see how much passion and need there is to talk. And also that’s a way to feed into events. So, now Revel is basically Meetup meets Facebook for women over 40,” she said.
As Revel’s newly-appointed chief creative officer, she recently announced its arrival on Nextdoor, the neighborhood app, and posted that she was hosting a Saturday morning walk on Gerard Drive. “Within minutes, I had 40 women and a sold-out event,” she said. “And tons of women joining Revel. I think it’s very, very clear that women our age want community.”
It should be noted that this is hardly some “ladies who lunch” collective. Revel’s East End members include Janet Reitman, a year-round Springs resident who is a contributing writer at The New York Times and author of “Inside Scientology.” There’s also Cindy Spiegel, who has been coming out to Springs since the 1970s, who’s a founding editor of Riverhead Books and later, Spiegel & Grau within Random House, which was recently re-launched as an independent publisher.
“I was one of the earliest Woolfers,” Ms. Spiegel wrote in an email, “when it was just a group of women Nina knew, and I was blown away by how intimate everyone was — how brave, open, supportive, and kind everyone was, sharing such personal experiences, advice, fears, difficulties. . . . I realized that this group was filling a need that we didn’t know we had — a place to turn with questions or worries, or just companionship.”
Sari Cooper, a part-time Southampton resident, is a certified sex therapist and the founder of the Center for Love and Sex and Sex Esteem in Manhattan. She’s a Reveler and a regular host of the Monday Night Sex Esteem Talk, a Revel weekly event that discusses sex, sexual health, and relationships. On Monday, Ms. Cooper will host “How to Create an Enthusiastic, Erotic Valentine’s Day.”
If Revel is buzzy at the moment — and it seems to be — then Ms. Collins is possibly its queen bee. Her ideas for future events (“I want to do drinks on the rooftop of the Sag Harbor Cinema”), as well as her willingness to make time for other women over 40 and find new ways to support and inspire each other, seem limitless.
“Nina inspired me. Full stop. I had never met someone as open as she to crowdsourcing life. I always thought I was somehow above that. I have a lot to learn,” said Joy Marcus, a Hamptons Reveler, lecturer at Princeton University, a co-founder of Brilliant Friends, a venture fund that invests in women-led technology, and a board member of three companies, including one on the Nasdaq.
