August 13, 2008

Turning 34

2008 1522 page14 capow, she must be smart,” someone behind me said. I was a freshman standing in line at my college cafeteria, not particularly listening. Until now. Now my ears were hooked on the thread of conversation behind me.
 
“How old do you think she is?” the group of college boys asked one another.
 
“Fifteen?”
 
“Sixteen?”
 
“No, I think 14.”
 
I was too shy to turn around, too shy to tell them I was 19 years old. No child prodigy here.
For many years I looked young—too young. When I was 10, I was wearing the clothing of a 6-year-old. When I was in high school I looked like a perpetual freshman. When I was a teacher in Thailand my students called me dek dek—“baby-baby.” I did not consider this a good thing. I wanted to be older, to look older.
 
“One day you’re going to be glad you look young,” people would tell me again and again. “Just wait.”
 
2008 1522 page14That day has come.
 
I turn 34 this month. I wear sunscreen now, tablespoons of it. I want to prevent skin cancer certainly, but my everyday diligence is probably more influenced by wrinkles. When I think back to my tanning days, I do so with chagrin. But here is my embarrassing admission: at night I slather on a multivitamin lotion that promises to reveal “younger skin four times faster than an ordinary moisturizer.”
 
I do not feel proud about any of this. In fact, I am deeply ambivalent.
 
We live in a culture obsessed with youth. “Forty is the new 30,” we hear. “Fifty is the new 40.”1 Botulinum toxin, once known as a “sausage poison,” is now injected into foreheads and eye creases. Each year we watch public faces morph into something not quite human. Lips grow plump. Cheeks get strangely puffy. Skin around the eyes is taut. Apparently anything is better than aging.
 
Charla Krupp, a columnist for More magazine, argues that it is necessary to look young and hip (or as she calls it, “Y&H”) to be seen as relevant in the workplace. She’s written a book titled How Not to Look Old, which one Amazon reviewer calls “Excellent Advice,” while another dubs it, “How To Feel Like You’re Slipping.”
 
In a Time magazine interview, Krupp discusses the gray-hair movement. “I understand and appreciate women who have silver hair, and I think that they can look amazing, but it’s such a luxury to be able to go gray. Because it is an aging look, and it means that you don’t care about people knowing your age.”2
 
But why is it bad if people know your age?
 
When I taught conversational English in South Korea my students would typically ask new acquaintances three questions: “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “How old are you?” Those more familiar with Western culture changed the last question to: “Do you mind if I ask your age?”
 
“If you think someone will mind,” I’d tell my students, “don’t ask. In fact, if you think someone is over 30, don’t ask; especially if you’re talking to a woman.”
 
Since there were so many exceptions in the English language, I was pleased to give this piece of definitive wisdom. Now, I’m appalled. The implication is that after 30, age is a source of embarrassment, especially for women. How disheartening.
 
When I sat down to write this column, I felt a bit silly. What do I know about aging? But I was pulled to the topic because my friends and I are already bemoaning our age. It’s a cultural reflex, this grousing. Being 30 is fantastic. I look forward to 40 and 50 and 60.
 
We should celebrate each year God has given us, reclaiming our age. I especially say this to women: Let’s break the stereotype that we feel shame about growing older. All of us—men and women—gain wisdom with each year. Time gives our talents space to grow. Tolstoy was 70 when he published his last novel, Resurrection. Doris Lessing was 88 when she won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. I can’t imagine either of them pretending to be 29.
 
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1Why can’t 40 be 40 and 50 be 50?
2Charla Krupp, interviewed by Andrea Sachs, in “How Not to Look Old: Author Charla Krupp,” Time, Jan. 3, 2008, www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1699744-1,00.html.
 
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Sari Fordham is an assistant professor at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. She teaches in the Department of English and Communication.

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