When younger moms gush, “I hope I look like you when I’m 54,” it almost feels like a compliment.
A woman I know just shaved 10 years off her age. A loud and proud feminist in every other arena, she feels forced to lie about her age to make herself more hirable and desirable for employment in a country where just being female means we earn less and are less likely to get hired than equally- or less-qualified men.
This woman even took the time to commit the desperate act of commenting on numerous professional websites about how it ‘used to be funny that websites were mistaken about my age, but now it’s not’- which means she’s actively promoting the lie of her new age to cover the ‘mistake’ of the internet somehow getting her age ten years older.
The Internet does not lie. People lie on the internet, A WHOLE LOT, but the internet states everything as if it were fact, including this woman’s attempt to undermine the veracity of the internet when it comes to correcting myths, like her new and improved age.
Now, while I am honest about my age, I’m no Mother Teresa. My wrinkles get filled, filed and abraded (when I can afford it). But I won’t lie about my age, and not just because it’s just too easy in this day and age for the truth to be found. On the internet. Which is ironic, since the internet is the world’s largest factory for the death of facts. (People who think “it must be true, it’s on the internet” is also why Donald Trump is president.) But I’m wandering off topic, like us 54 year olds tend to do. Sorry.
A woman lying about her age is not just anti-feminist, it’s also simultaneously so last century and this presidential administration. In our current climate of bold-faced, unrepentant liars and the people who blindly repeat their lies, women should be bravely honest about their ages. Because while being hireable and desirable matters, being older and still being hireable and desirable matters just that much more. Right the fuck now.
Sadly, I’m also old and cynical enough to know that Old is The New Young! will never be emblazoned on the cover of Vogue, Cosmo, or even More magazine. But when my super hot, sexy and stylish 58 year old girlfriend Dana called, SQUEALING about an article in the latest issue of AARP magazine, the way all girls squealed over Leif Garrett in Tiger Beat or wished we were as hip as Phoebe Cates in Seventeen, in the Pleistocene Era of the 1970s— I was taken very aback.
ME: Wait. What? You read AARP Magazine?
DANA: It’s cheap, has good recipes, medical prescription discounts, some of the stories are actually blah, blah, blah... BUT, They have a wonderful article about YOU! Well not exactly you, but it's all about older people adopting children!!
Despite being simultaneously excited and grossed out, here it is... the wonderful AARP article about how older people are adopting children.
Once firmly north of fifty, one gets used to every compliment feeling slightly backhanded. "You look SO amazing", people exult when I brush my hair, slap on mascara and hopefully matching earrings. But one also hears the silent "For your age!" at the end of that sentence. And if the complimenters are family members, then they actually say "for your age" out loud because nothing insulates and insults quite like family.
One might need to believe the complimenters aren't just gushing out compliments because they've just been backed (by me dropping my Age Bomb) into a complimenting corner. Truly, why else would a person volunteer their age except for others to be forced to tell them how much they don't appear to be the age they just actually are because they just uttered it?
However, if one simply age bombs just to receive compliments, be warned: Age Bombing can backfire. Some folks just nod appreciatively, because they can clearly see the tread marks. Sometimes they start speaking louder and slower. Or they gape, "And you have a five year old?" as if hoping I said was I have a thirty-five old. Compliments feel better when they aren’t forced out of innocent victims like pearls sliced from a still living oyster.
There is such freedom in simply stating one’s age instead of being coy, vague or offended.
Drop the age bomb and let your simple truth separate the women from the girls.
You might stop conversation in it's tracks, you might get compliments, requests for your phone number, or you might hear, "That's cool. My mom's your age." If you hear that from a fellow preschool parent, well then... get used to it.
Age culture is so warped that people and social media platforms rave about older women like Annette Bening, Anjelica Huston or Jamie Lee Curtis for aging bravely. It's not like they bathe the feet of lepers with their hair, they are merely aging like civilians, but here in LA, they are feministo-heroes for letting it all hang out and flap gently in the breeze. Actually, it is rather brave to age naturally, considering how cruel and evil people can be when judging while hiding behind social media apps and QWERTY keyboards.
And while thrilled and proud to be a mother, I sometimes catch myself in the mirror, while monitoring Grace’s teeth-brushing avoidance tactics. Before I can glance away, I’m already darkly assessing which facial features are hanging a bit lower than yesterday. We’ve been asked if Grace is our granddaughter- and while that stings more than we care to admit- it's just a small price to pay to for the happiness of having her in our lives.
I suppose I could have had children earlier in life, but then I'd be a divorced single mother at best, and a not very good mother at worst. When I get scared about being sixty when Grace is ten, This Old Mom knows that if my life had unfolded in any other way, I wouldn't get to be Grace's mother- which snuffs out all lingering 'what ifs'. I was born to be my daughter's mother, even if MY birth was a long, long, LOOONNNGGGG ass time ago.
In an attempt to bring new readers up to speed on how Kathleen Dennehy became This Old Mom, this is a previously published post from This Old Mom.com. Visit and subscribe... if you dare.