“How old are you?”
I’ve never quite understood how to take this statement. Some say, it is supposed to be an indicator to do a simple subtraction – and this will lead you to uncover how many years of your life you have wasted until that point. Some say it is just a polite conversation starter. If it is indeed just that, then I must have been misled. At the very beginning of the conversation, you are confronted with your mortality – “how old are you? How many years you got left? Oh, you’re just a kid, I’m jealous. I’m turning 40. I don’t nearly have as much time as you”.How is one supposed to have a decent conversation whilst dealing with an existentialist dilemma?
We, as a human race, solve this dilemma through different ways. Firstly, we do it via language. Instead of calling someone ‘old’, we start calling them ‘mature’, as if that’s going to make them feel any better! ‘Mature’ is one of those nasty words that have stuck with us in our vocabulary. Though maturity may hit someone well beyond their years, it doesn’t hide the fact that its just synonym for ‘old’, ‘elderly’ or any of those passively redundant words that tell you that your time is up. It is the same fundamental as calling someone ‘well fed’ rather than its much dreaded counterpart – fat.
Secondly, women stop ageing when they turn 18 years old. 18 is the age where time stops for women. After women turn 18, a guy cannot expect the truth about a woman’s age. Not only is it impolite to ask women their age after they’ve turned 18, if a woman greying at the sides and fiddling with her dentures tells you that she is 18, as a gentleman, you have no choice but to believe her. All adult women on earth as of now are 18 years old. My aunt was 18 years old when she died and if I’m lucky enough to have a daughter, she will continue to live well beyond her years, yet when the time comes, she will die aged 18 years.
It is not only the social norm of politeness that sidesteps the question of age; the products do the same as well. If I fiddle around long enough in my ex-girlfriend’s drawer, apart from a lot of bad memories, I will find uncountable products that enable her to look 18 years old 24/7. Whether it be those creams that can magically take away those wrinkles, or undergoing the knife and other painful processes such as waxing to rekindle the romance with our pubescent bodies, we are a race who go berserk to maintain our 18 year old look.
We have ‘mature’ actors (do you see how nasty that word is now) playing 18 year old college heartthrobs with conviction on screen and we try and replicate that sentiment in real life. It is not as much about getting old as much as it is about ‘maintaining the youth’. We are in a race against the biological clock which we are stubborn enough to run.
For men, it is quite the opposite. The more ‘mature’ you are, the more attractive you become. So while George Clooney oozes attractiveness, a pre-pubescent Justin Beiber does not. So you have a culture of women who are forever 18, while the men keep ‘maturing’ and become more and more attractive. Older women going after younger men draw flak from the community and negative connotations such as ‘cougar’, whereas older men can romance ladies half their without raising an eyebrow – Rupert Murdoch-Wendy Cheng, Michael Douglas-Catherine Zeta Jones etc. The most they get called are ‘trophy wives’. And that’s a term for women again! The men get off scot free.
How oldam I?
I’m not ‘mature’ enough to answer that question!
