Is 50 the new 30?
- 10
- Feb
The only thing worse than getting older is the alternative. Yet however logical this is, when a big birthday is hovering on the horizon like impending doom, you can’t help but wish you were Benjamin Button, with aches and pains, age spots, muffin tops, and senior moments melting away with the years.
Between you and me, I look in the mirror sometimes and think in a smug self-satisfied way, “Mm. Not bad for an old bird”, then I put in my contact lenses and get a terrible fright when I see a lined old face blinking back at me. I guess nature is trying to be kind in letting our eyesight deteriorate at the same pace as our skin!
Keeping my age under wraps… in vain!
As you might know, I have been in my extremely late mid-thirties for some considerable time now, and had been planning to stay there, well, forever really. I accidentally joined Facebook – the social networking site – last year and in so doing gave my date of birth for what I thought was a private security question. I was horrified to find that it appeared on the site for everybody in the world to see. People stopped me in the street and said “I had no idea you were THAT old”. I was mortified and unsubscribed before you could say crepey old decollatage.
Still the same girl inside
I have been invited to a lot of 50th birthday parties lately and it’s OK when it’s happening to someone else. It can’t happen to me though, can it? I am still that girl who likes to stand on chair playing air guitar, singing wildly off-key to Shania Twain’s “Man I feel like a Woman”; the same girl who cackles witch-like to any joke her girlfriends make; the same girl whose eyes fill with tears at the very mention of romance, a vulnerable child or a cute kitten; the same girl who on the inside is a soft and as easily hurt as a sixteen-year-old no matter how hard she tries to appear to the world as level-headed career woman.
“Redefining 50″
I was reading an article in the Sunday Times this week about “Redefining 50″. The party isn’t over, it claims. I began to feel very heartened as I read about the re-blossoming of careers of women in their fifties. Formidable and beautiful ladies like Madonna, Marie Helvin, Twiggy and Jerry Hall were mentioned.
I felt good about where I was in my life. A fantastic husband, two wonderful children, healthy parents, a great career – these are all things that make me very happy. Yes, life couldn’t be better!!!! Thank you, Sunday Times, you gave me back the feel-good factor.
Then I read the last paragraph:
“50 is merely the dawn of what comes next. It promises to be something very different to how our parents got old. Indeed, the 21st century is a great time to be a woman in your fifties, unless you have ambitions to be a television presenter……………..”
Serves me right! I am going to stop reading these posh papers!
What do you think? Is 50 the new 30? Let me know what you think.
Love and age spots,
Debbie