BY the time Morena Farina stands behind the decks, the room has usually already made its mind up.
Some see the Melbourne DJ from last year’s Married At First Sight. Some see the outspoken woman with the glamorous outfits, bold confidence and refusal to tone herself down for anybody’s comfort. Others see a woman approaching 60 who simply refuses to disappear quietly into the background.
But Farina sees something else entirely.
Connection.
For her, DJing is not ego. It is not vanity wrapped in lights and music, but rather a way of pulling people back toward themselves toward joy, movement, fun and the forgotten thrill of dressing up, dancing badly, singing loudly and feeling alive again.
“Music feeds my soul,” she says simply.
And perhaps that explains why, even through the hurt, the scrutiny and the chaos of sudden public exposure, Farina still speaks with the energy of someone determined not to let life harden her.
At 59, she is still rebuilding, searching and becoming as she enters ‘Sixties-hood’.
Long before reality television entered the picture, Farina was already trying to reconstruct herself after divorce.
She spent almost three decades in a marriage she now describes as loveless — a line she delivers not dramatically, but with the quiet exhaustion of someone grieving lost time rather than lost romance.
The first few years afterwards felt almost frantic.
“That’s what you do when you’re divorced,” she says. “You go out on a rampage. You want to do everything that you have never done in your life because you’ve missed out.”
Then came the quieter realisation.
“Well, now what?”
What followed was something many people over 50 will recognise immediately: shrinking social circles, loneliness disguised as routine, and the strange emotional flatness that can arrive when everyone around you seems to retreat indoors.
“People in my age group do not want to go out,” she says. “People in my age group do not want to get dressed up. Most people in my age group are depressed, and I’m not talking everybody, but the majority… so what chance did I have?”
It is one of the most honest moments in our conversation because Farina is describing something other than dramatic heartbreak, it’s quieter and perhaps more confronting — invisibility.
The sense that after a certain age, particularly for women, society quietly expects you to dim yourself.
Farina refused.
Her second act began almost accidentally.
At the time, Farina was already well known in Melbourne fitness circles, teaching large group classes after spending more than 30 years in the industry.
One night, while out dancing, another female DJ approached her with an unexpected observation.
“You’d make a great DJ.”
Farina laughed it off at first, then the idea lodged itself in her head and refused to leave. The following Monday, standing in front of one of her fitness classes, she suddenly realised she was already performing, already reading crowds and, importantly, creating good energy.
“All I did was look at my class and think… I’m already DJing.”
What came next sounds either wildly courageous or mildly unhinged depending on your perspective. She walked into a DJ equipment store and spent about $40,000 on professional gear despite never having DJed professionally before.
The salesman tried talking her out of it.
“He said, ‘I can’t sell this stuff to you. This is for professional DJs.’”
Farina’s response was classic Morena.
“I said, ‘So you don’t want my money?’”
Then Covid hit.
The equipment arrived the same week Melbourne entered lockdown. Work disappeared almost overnight and, like countless Australians, Farina suddenly found herself isolated, frightened and staring at financial uncertainty.
“If it wasn’t for my kids paying my way, I would have been one of the statistics,” she says quietly.
But she found resilience. Instead, she spent those lockdown years teaching herself music production, mixing and performance. What began as survival slowly evolved into reinvention.
And when restrictions finally lifted, something unexpected happened.
People wanted her. Not despite her age, but because of it.
Farina speaks about dating after 50 with the kind of bluntness that instantly cuts through cliché.
There are no inspirational Pinterest or Instagram quotes here. No polished “love yourself first” monologues.
Just lived experience.
“Modern dating is disgusting, to be honest” she says, candidly.
She talks about the strange contradiction many older women face: becoming simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible at the same time.
Desired physically. Dismissed emotionally.
At her gigs — many attracting hundreds of people — Farina says younger men regularly approach her.
“I get plenty of young people who would love to take me to bed,” she says with a laugh. “And you know what I say to them? ‘Would you like me to breastfeed you or burp you?’”
Then comes the harder truth.
“The other ones that come up to me are the married men.”
It is not bitterness that drives these observations so much as disappointment. Farina still believes in love and loyalty, deeply. She simply no longer believes in pretending modern dating is easy for people in their 50s and 60s.
“I would love somebody to fall in love with my imperfections,” she says.
And perhaps that line lands harder because it arrives after all the bravado has briefly slipped away.
Farina knows she is judged.
For her clothes, confidence, showing cleavage at nearly 60, speaking loudly, and for refusing to tone herself down into something more socially acceptable.
She also knows many of the harshest critics are women.
“I get women criticising me because of my body,” she says. “They criticise me for what I wear… but I don’t care about my age. What I wear suits me, and it suits what I’m doing.”
There is no apology in her, and that may be precisely why some people struggle with her.
Older women are often expected to become softer, quieter, discreet and less visible. Attractive but not too attractive. Confident but not too confident. Present, but never disruptive.
Farina has no interest in that deal, of course.
“What are you scared of?” she asks. “How many lives are you going to get?”
Farina does not shy away from discussing the emotional toll of reality television.
She believes the experience fundamentally misrepresented her and left her feeling wounded by the way conflict and vulnerability were amplified for entertainment. She is particularly critical of what she sees as a lack of care shown toward contestants navigating emotionally intense environments.
But while the experience clearly affected her, it is striking that she repeatedly circles back to resilience rather than revenge.
“It would have to not be human not to have an impact on you,” she says.
And yet she refuses to let it become the defining chapter of her life, and she would rather talk about community, music, crowds, dancing and human connection.
At one point during the interview, she excitedly plays a modern remix of Neil Sedaka’s Oh! Carol down the phone, delighted by the way old songs can suddenly feel alive again for new audiences.
“That’s where I get to perform,” she says excitedly. “That’s where I get to make people happy.”
You can hear her entire mood lift in real time.
“This is my job now,” she laughs.
The original melody is still there, but layered beneath a contemporary beat designed to pull multiple generations onto the same dance floor. Farina starts half-singing, half-performing the track through the phone while explaining how carefully she searches for songs that can awaken memories without trapping people in the past.
“It’s not too techno,” she says. “You can still dance with your loved one… but then I get to perform.”
For a few seconds, the heavy conversation about heartbreak, television and loneliness disappears entirely. Two people singing an old song reimagined for a different stage of life.
“You see?” she says afterwards. “That’s already changed my mood.”
Farina is not presenting herself as healed, she’s courageously working her way through that.
She still wants companionship and still talks openly about loneliness. She still hopes someone, somewhere, will eventually love the imperfect human beneath the public persona.
But she has stopped waiting for permission to live fully in the meantime.
These days, happiness looks less complicated than it once did.
Her children. A crowded dance floor. A room full of strangers singing together. The pulse of music.
The chance to create joy for somebody else.
“Every time I’m behind the decks,” she says, when asked what happiness looks like now.
Not every wound becomes wisdom. Not every public humiliation transforms neatly into empowerment.
Life is rarely that tidy, of course.
But sometimes, after the heartbreak, the criticism, the years spent feeling unseen, a woman can still walk into a crowded room, press play, lift her head and remind herself — and everyone watching — that she is not finished yet.
Farina is launching a new live music and DJ project called FM Sisters — an 80s disco-inspired night blending live vocals, DJ sets and Italian classics at Melbourne’s Reggio Calabria Club. “It’s basically like paying for dinner and getting us for free,” Morena laughs. The launch night will feature live music, dancing, food and what Farina describes as “wholesome people only”. To book Morena Farina for DJ, MC or event work, follow her on Instagram at @DJMorenaOfficial and send her a DM.