There has been a headline on CNN for a while: Don’t Freak Out over Turning 40. The accompanying picture is of Carmen Diaz, all the other pictures are of women and the article is written by a woman. I really didn’t know women freaked over 40 any more. Before I ever turned 40 nearly 30 years ago, Gloria Steinem had famously said, “This is what 40 is supposed to look like.”
I celebrated my 40th in the lead of Forty Carats, the show in which the 20 year old man falls in love with the 40 year old woman and she with him. We invited friends to the Sunday afternoon matinee and then had a great party. A good time was had by all and I certainly didn’t freak out over anything. As I am on the cusp of the baby boomers (having been born during rather than at the end of WWII), my 40th was followed by lots of articles titled “Look Who’s Turning 40” ~ with lots of pictures of really good looking women who certainly didn’t look like they were freaking out either. And that was 30 years ago. To give them credit, the women under the same head line in this article don’t look like they are upset either.
My 40s are all turning 70 now. And we aren’t freaking out about that either. Age is such an illusive concept. It helps us know things like what size clothes to buy our 4 year old, and (sort of) what our first grader should be able to learn before heading into second grade. It gives the government a guide to when we are smart enough to drink, drive, vote and fight. All of those guide- lines have been changed off and on over the years however and people mature and learn at different times and speeds. Fashions make our girls look like women and women look like girls and techno-geeks with no fashion sense at all are millionaires in their late teens because of their understanding of computers and the internet.
Why in 2012 should that headline or that article be at all relevant? You are who and what you are regardless of how many full moons have passed since your birth. No need to be upset about any of it. Live it. Enjoy it. Be in it. And be blessed ~
4 comments:
After I graduated from college I worked at B. Dalton Bookseller. Many of us were quite young. Our manager, Maisie, was less young. One time one of the employees said, "You know Maisie is fifty!" As if that were an advanced age for a bookstore manager. Today, being well past that mark myself, I look back and say, "Yeah, so?" My wife commented recently that she doesn't feel her chronological age. I have to say I feel the same way.
So thanks for that, Tahoe Mom!
You are welcome, Mike! That's the point of course, "my point being", that we can no longer be really sure what our chronological age is "supposed" to feel like. I think when you were young, 50 was old. Not any more. 70's not so bad either. And now I am off to the gym! :)
Most of us are 25 in our minds-- the body just doesn't respond that way!
I remember that performance...
AppsRus ~ very true. I do like being young in spirit. It helps the body. I remember you were there.
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