"Age Is Just A Number—And Mine's Unlisted."

By Karen and Erica

You’ve surely heard this phrase before. Sounds kind of catchy. Always said by a woman, smiling, somehow suggesting that she is in charge of her life and her image.

But think about it. What is she actually saying?

She is saying that the years she has lived count for nothing significant, amounting only to a meaningless data point. Yet, she will not admit to the number. Why not? We know why not. Because the number signals that she is past her sell-by date. Sexless. Irrelevant. Old.

So, far from taking charge of her life and her image, she is submitting to an archaic stereotype—that women past a certain age are done. She signals that women must be be coy about their age. So they can be proud when someone says: You don’t look a day over 40.

What an absurd, yet damaging, message.

Age is not “just a number.” The passage of each year is a marker of life and health and experience. Having years under your belt is a wondrous thing—something to be celebrated, something many people do not achieve. Your age is an indication that you have done and learned many things. That you have judgment. That you have style. That you can offer younger people perspective. That, like men of the same age, you can now be the sexy savant in the room.

And of course you look your age. How could you not? If people say you look good for your age, they are confused. They think you can’t look elegant and attractive and lively if you are above a certain age. Tell them to drag themselves from their caves and into the twenty-first century. This is what women our age look like.

Let’s stop coming up with cute phrases that are intended to tell women they should fear and despise age. Let’s congratulate each other on who we are and how we look. And let’s put behind us the attitudes these catchy phrases represent. It’s the attitudes that are obsolete. Not us.