Women and Age

My husband said something odd to me the other day. He said, “Um...you’re gonna be 39 in a couple months...”

I wondered where he was going with this. I answered, “Yeah...”

“Can you promise me something?”

“What?”

“Can you promise me you’ll only be 39 for one year?”

I smiled. “I promise I won’t be one of those weird women. I’ll be 39 for one year, and then I’ll be 40.” He looked so relieved!

I’ve never understood the weird obsession with women and age. Our culture has this strange idea that women are not allowed to be old. Many people have the idea that it is impolite to ask a woman her age, and many women routinely lie about their age, saying they’re years younger than they really are. Women obviously decades older coyly say they’re 39. Why?

I am the age I am. I’ve got some gray hair. I’m getting more all the time. I’ve got a few wrinkles. So? There’s nothing wrong with that.

A lot of things contribute to the pressure on women to pretend to be younger than they truly are. I could rant about age discrimination -- how women really are pressured to lie about their age and try to look younger than they really are because otherwise no one will hire them, even though age discrimination is illegal (this happens with men too). I could rant about the cosmetics industry. Women are pressured to dye their hair as soon as they start to get any gray. Lotions and creams abound that are advertised to “erase fine lines” and “reduce wrinkles.” I could surely rant about cosmetic surgeons. They went through medical school and a residency so they could...do facelifts? That’s their idea of helping humanity? I have the utmost respect for plastic surgeons who do reconstructive surgery for victims of fires, accidents, etc., but for surgeons who only do facelifts, breast implants, etc., couldn’t you have just skipped medical school and gotten a job selling sofas or something instead?

The thing is, I think there’s a chicken-and-egg effect here. Cosmetics corporations and cosmetic surgeons are all too willing to exploit women’s insecurity about aging, and I think they’ve done a great deal to exacerbate it (and for that, a loud “BOO HISS!”), but I think the insecurity was already there. I think the age discrimination is just a matter of companies not wanting to pay for experience, though the people discriminating may also have a bias against older women particularly.

So the question is, why were women insecure about aging to start with?

I think one reason is men are usually attracted to younger women. For evolutionary reasons this makes sense, and so perhaps women worry that they are no longer sexually desirable if they no longer look young. The problem with this reasoning is there are so many holes in it. If a woman is in a relationship, why would she not feel desirable? Yet many married women feel that getting old is a bad thing (and many unmarried old women who are not interested in a relationship feel compelled to lie about their age as well). Telling someone you’re 39 when you obviously look 55 or 65 isn’t going to make you look any younger. It will only make you look insecure and uncomfortable in your own skin. I’m not saying that men never leave their wives for younger women, but lying about their age isn’t going to fool them. If they leave, it’s because of behavior, interaction and emotions, not a number.

I think another reason is our society has little respect for old people of either gender. Most cultures revere their elders for their wisdom. We treat our old people like dirt. Since women live longer than men, there are more old women than old men. Since these women are treated like dirt, I think as women grow older, they think “I don’t want to be like that!” In a sane culture, we’d think, “Hey, I’ll be in that position some day. Let’s treat these women better.” But this is a mentally ill culture.