Age Is Just A Number

Sometimes it freaks me out to find out how old people are. It’s gotten more and more difficult to look at people and guess their age. Perhaps it’s because I’ve gotten older and age is less cut and dry . The logic of “she’s old, like my mom’s age, old” or “he’s still got hair, he must be young” simply doesn‘t work anymore. Instead, deductive reasoning is heavily relied upon, at least for me. I find myself looking at people and thinking “well, she looks pretty young, maybe late 20’s, but she’s not married and doesn’t have kids, so she’s probably actually mid-to-late 30’s.”

When I was a child, 40 was old. Period. Now, it‘s just not. So, what happened?

It could be any number of things really; the downfall of the tapered jean, the virtual extinction of the station wagon, the increased prevalence of divorce and subsequent re-entry into the dating world, fear, the overnight popularity of tiny dogs, the widespread availability of ProActiv solution, the introduction of low-rise jeans, more convenient access to salons, Denise Austin, the Gazelle, Sex and the City, a greater focus on dental hygiene..

While any one of these things could be responsible for today’s “40 is the new 30” attitude, I think that it ultimately boils down to one thing: selfishness.

This is what I think happened:

Warning: the following statements are based on my perception of how life used to be, when people were old. I do realize that I‘m 24, which is an age that wasn‘t even considered old when people were old. You should also know that I’m a recovering feminist, which is why I credit women for changing the societal attitudes of a nation.

For years, women especially were given roles, sometimes spoken, sometimes not, but almost always implied. Career women were bitches, stay-at-home moms were weak, single women in their late 30’s or early 40’s were probably gay. If a woman wasn’t working for ‘the man’ or waiting on a man, she was trying to be a man, or so thought society. It was all about the man. Then one day in the mid-to-late 90’s, at least in my imagination, some chick woke up and said “fuck the man” - which likely caused confusion if she was lying next to one. She decided to be selfish. She decided that it was possible to have it all. She decided that it could be all about her and that was OK.

She got up, dumped her boyfriend, quit her job, adopted a baby, opened her own business, dated Angelina Jolie, got a mani/pedi, burned her mom jeans, trained for a marathon, got botox, rescued a puppy from a well, and learned how to fly a plane…all before noon. Instead of being tired, she was invigorated and told all other women that they could do the same. All other women under the age of 40 at the time rejoiced and simultaneously embraced yoga.

For the first time, women began taking care of themselves before others and were no longer defined by their age. Men saw the women and started to become selfish too; embracing skin care products, highlights and flat front trousers. They began investing more in looking good themselves, because they were forced to vie for a place in the lives of women that they once didn’t have to work very hard to earn. Both sexes began looking and feeling younger because it became harder to get old than to stay young.

Yes, it was on that imaginative and magical day that 40 became the new 30, and the world has never been the same. We all realized that we can not only have it all, but we can look damn good doing it - with a little botox and a cardio strip tease class or two, of course. Thanks to one women, who is a figment of my imagination, we decided that age is not a definition, it’s only a number.

I applaud her and look forward to being 40 because of her epiphany. In fact, she walked past me the other day. I thought to myself “well, she looks pretty young, maybe late 20’s, but she’s not married…oh, who really cares.”

You know what…scratch all that. I think it was the downfall of the tapered jean that turned the tide. I just let my mind wander for too long ;-)