Like bloody hell it is.
Driving in to work this morning, a lady called in to give herself a birthday shout out, and the DJ commented that 40 is the new 20.
Even if I look at it from a perspective that with longer average lifespans, 40 isn't the 'end' of your life - but then, I never held to that, either. Hell, I don't consider 80 to be the 'end' of your life if you still have your mind and a good bit of your body and your health.
I'm only 30, and the idea that 40 is the new 20 was insulting as all get out - by the time I'm 40, I would have lived for 20 more year beyond my twenties. I'll be smarter, wiser, more confident, more secure, more Me. I'll have learned, and loved, and lost. I'll have overcome adversity, and I'll have given in to things I cannot change.
In fact, the ONLY thing that could possibly have NOT improved on me between the ages of 20 and 40 is my physical apperance - and nowadays, hell, that's not even a given. In ten years, I MIGHT not be obese anymore - it certainly gives me plenty of time to work towards it.
So, what, exactly makes 40 the new 20? Are 40y/o's now immature, still living with their parents, barely starting out on a carrer, and freshfaced and young? Holy shit, I most bloody well HOPE not.
I mean - really. Maybe that's what really pissed me off the most - the idea that perky boobs and a lack of crows feet are somehow better than all of the experience that extra twenty years provide. That if you could just stay suspended there - in your 20's - that makes you better than someone who has moved on and grown - maybe out, but DEFINITELY up.
But then, maybe that's the problem with this country and this culture, as a whole. We don't want to grow up. We want to stay children, and have someone else take care of us, and manage our retirement, and manage our health. We want someone to tell us what to eat, and when, and where to live, and what to want. Maybe we, as a country, HOPE that 40 is the new 20, because it means you can still be excused for not knowing better, for not caring more, for still having an adolescent attitude towards life.
No thank you. I happen to LIKE being an adult - with all the freedoms (and the pains) that entails. I only have two parents, and I don't need the gov't or society to be my stepparents of adulthood.
40 is the new 20 (0r 30) my ass. Droopy, stretchmarked, and bigger than it was 10/15/20 years ago as it may be.
Friday, November 2, 2007
40 is the new 20
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1 comment:
I think ageism is a real killer. Approaching forty (two and a bit months and counting...)...
I understand that statement as a woman who never fails to shock the twenty and early thirty somethings I encounter.
They usually peg me as a old looking late twenty or early thirty who has weird, not trendy style.
Then, when they realize that I'm the same age as some of their mamas, who move through the world weighed down by patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality which really takes a toll on wimmin who are early aged in order to be taken "seriously" as they perform what they have been told seems adult, rather than feeling their own way toward expressing themselves and their style...
when their daughters hear that I'm pretty much forty, they do a double take because I'm clearly not like their mothers some of whom are almost grandmothers, many of whom married and birthed so young.
So, I'm approaching forty and dealing with who I am, as I always have, while surrounded by wimmin who are not experiential peers, just age peers, who are just starting to come into their own.
Not quite my twenties, but I'm looking forward to something spectacularly unfortyish as I continue to manifest very differently than the wimmin I encounter who are also forty.
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