Do you lie about your age? Ten good reasons to lie about your age
1. You probably remembered it wrong anyway – Don’t you think that the run-up to the ‘big’ birthdays is always much worse than getting there? I was so worried about reaching 40 that I spent a whole year thinking I was 39 and missed 38 completely. Did I learn from this mistake? No. It all happened again before I hit 50. I was 49 for two years and never 48. The only good thing is that when I got to Big Zeros it wasn’t as bad as I feared and all the age anxiety was gone. . Until next time.
2. You haven’t grown up yet, much less old – I’m 55 years old, but I sum up strangers that I don’t know anything about too quickly and still, for the first few moments anyway, I believe everything they tell me. I think big sunglasses make me look cool and sexy and I still think one day I’ll have that strawberry pink villa in Provence. Or maybe it’s the whitewashed beach hut in Greece, as soon as I’ve realized whether I’m going to be rich or poor when I’m older.
3. You look sexy, why screw it up? – Age is really just a number, a guide if you like. As the size of the dress. Just because you bought that size 16 wool coat doesn’t mean you’re a size 16. You could have a 14, a 12 even, looking for a little more fabric delivery for your money. Lying about your age only becomes a problem when you lie to yourself. We all have to watch out for lamb dressed in lamb in whatever decade we are in. Vivienne Westwood believes that clothing, if done right, can be so enriching that it can actually change the way you think.
4. Only your doctor knows the whole truth, your dentist the whole tooth – I remember being horrified the first time my doctor used the M word, menopause, during a regular checkup. Even insulted. And again, I was a bit upset when my dentist took an X-ray without asking me if I could be pregnant. Why, when it is such a natural part of life that all women go through?
5. Bold questions don’t deserve direct answers – And why, exactly, is it rude to ask a lady her age? Where did that come from? Well, although men can remain fertile until their 80s, for us women (I almost say girls) decades before. It is the way of nature, of course, having children is much more physically demanding on our bodies. But the role of reproduction in the great game of love and marriage plays such an important role in our adult lives that it can be difficult for some of us to accept that that part of us is gone forever. This is the subject of my new novel, Ten Good Reasons to Lie About Your Age. Men may die younger but live longer.
6. Why else would God have invented hair dye? – In those TV shows, have you noticed how often it is the hair that makes the difference in the end? It’s about the top and the tail. Hair and shoes. Comfort and style is the most difficult aspect to achieve, but pioneers like Helen Mirren are leading the way by showing us what modern ‘old age’ is like.
7. Sensitivity has no age – Those old clichés ‘is what is inside that count’, ‘you are as young as you feel’ are very good and they are true but, when it comes to presentation, the images and the numbers are mixed. Of course, age doesn’t matter when you meet someone, but it can make a difference when you need to create that all-important first impression.
8. Anyway, it takes at least ten years to get used to your real age. – The fact that we all live longer and more active lives has not yet been taken into account everywhere, especially by employers. I’m sure the time will come when someone who says you look young will not be seen, or needs to be seen, as a compliment. We will be able to point to ourselves and say ‘this is what 40, 50, 60, 70 looks like’. But we haven’t arrived yet.
9. Everyone knows that lies start at 40 – While my father lied about his age to join the RAF and join the war, my mother lied about his age so that she could continue working as long as she could. Everybody was on it. Thanks to computer databases, it’s much harder to get away with lying about your age these days, but at least the job is one where both genders are in the same boat. Thanks, again, to computers, the world is more obsessed with numbers than ever. When you request any little thing these days, be it a store card or a contest entry, they always want to know your date of birth. As for having your actual date of birth on internet sites like Facebook, it’s like hanging a banner in your window with your mother’s maiden name in 10-foot letters. Have a permanent, fake date of birth firmly stored in the back of your mind along with your favorite PIN number and passwords. And while you do, rest a few years, why not do it? After all,
10. No one can cut you in half and count the rings.