Forever young
Some thoughts on not aging, despite my best efforts
I have a confession: I’m turning 40 this year. I don’t look 40 at all. I don’t mean I look young for my age, like 34. I mean that, despite almost four decades on this earth, I still haven’t lost the baby face I was born with when I came out of my mother’s womb in 1985.
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a coworker who said they loved Emily in Paris. I suggested they watch Younger next, because it was created by the same guy (who also co-created Sex and the City). A week later, Netflix must have been listening to our Microsoft Teams conversation, because Younger started popping up in my Netflix queue. I started a rewatch out of habit, having seen the entire show at least twice.
If you haven’t seen it, Younger is about a divorced mom in her 40s who pretends to be in her 20s to get a job, then starts dating a younger guy who doesn’t know her real age. I watched Younger, which premiered 10 years ago, when it was on TV. Back then, I most related to Kelsey Peters (played by Hilary Duff): the go-getting, millennial girlboss type.
Watching Younger now, at age 39, I found myself relating way more to Liza, the divorced mom. Wait, was I Liza?, I wondered.
A 40-year-old woman who people think is still in her 20s dating a much younger guy. Nope, I don’t relate to this show at all.
Discovering my ‘spiritual’ age gap
My current life felt eerily similar to Younger. I could easily pass as a 20-something. Some of my closest friends I’d met since moving to Austin were not even 27 yet. I’d given up my demanding, corporate career and was starting over in a new city. In the past year, I’d dated more than one younger man I’d met in the wild who was always shocked when I revealed how old I was.
”No, you’re not 38, that’s not possible,” remarked one of my dates, who’d just told me he turned 30 last month.
He then pointed to the center of my chest. “In here, you’re like me, you’re 30,” he said, meaning that in my heart, we were spiritually the same age.
I wanted to agree with him but was then promptly reminded of our age gap when I invited him back to my apartment to listen to records. He had never listened to music on vinyl before. When he asked mid-make out why the music stopped, I explained that you had to flip the record over for it to keep playing. Despite being anointed ‘spiritually 30’ by my date, I’d never felt older.
On our second date, he came over for a movie night and we decided to watch Fargo, a film I’d dubbed ‘the movie of my people’ because I’d grown up in Minnesota in the ‘90s.
”Woah, what kind of car is that?” my date inquired during the opening scene. “I’ve never seen a car like that before.”
”Oh, that’s an Oldsmobile,” I replied, laughing. “They don’t make them anymore.”
Despite my baby face and penchant for younger paramours, I have to constantly remind others (and myself) that I am kind of old now. Not elderly old, but like, Oldsmobile old.
Spiritually, I’m the age of this car.
Baby-faced but still baby-less
This past weekend, I was out at a bar with my 26- and 27-year-old girlfriends, respectively, when a man approached our table and asked if he could join us. He’d just moved to town and was looking to meet new people.
we have a stray my friend texted me while I was ordering us drinks, but I didn’t see the message because, unlike the youths, I don’t have my phone attached to my arm at all times.
”I felt like he could feel your energy at our table, even though you weren’t there,” my friend told me later. “You always meet people when we’re out and he could sense your gravitational pull.”
My friend was referring to my ability to strike up a conversation in person without making it awkward. This skill, once considered normal human interaction, has become a lost art. Like the Oldsmobile, the concept of socializing with a stranger had been forgotten, remembered only by those old enough to experience it firsthand.
At one point during the night, the stray we’d picked up wanted us all to go around the table and say whether or not we wanted kids. My Gen Z friends put themselves in the yes, I think so, someday category, but when it was my turn all I could do was answer with a laugh.
”Oh, I’m way older than I look,” I giggled girlishly. “That’s kind of a silly question at my age.”
People still ask me if I want kids someday all the time. I don’t know how to explain that, if I wanted to have a kid, it’s not a someday situation—it would have to happen RIGHT NOW.
For me, getting pregnant at age 39 would be a real Kombucha girl moment: oh crap, I’m pregnant. oh wait…I’m still fertile!?, would be my first thought. Hmm. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe I do want to have a baby.
The face I make when contemplating motherhood in my late 30s.
My bare-ly there skincare routine
We’re living in an era where everyone is obsessed with staying young. If you walk into a Sephora, it’s hard to find a skincare product that doesn’t claim to contain secret anti-aging ingredients. Another (younger) friend told me she started using retinol on the day of her 30th birthday, convinced that this is the year when it starts, she whispered, like aging was a horror movie you’re trapped in until you die.1
When I see fresh-faced, pimple-free girls in their 20s on social media talk about their 15-step nightly skincare routine, I have to resist the urge to comment and tell them they’re wasting their hard-earned money. Until I was 35, I barely took care of my skin. I washed my face with a bar of Neutrogena soap every night but never in the morning. I only put on moisturizer in the winter when my skin was dry. I didn’t start wearing sunscreen regularly until I moved to California in my early 30s.
Despite doing the bare minimum to my face (not even a daily moisturizer!!) for decades, I still look younger than most of the skincare influencers I scroll past on my social feeds. I’m not even trying to brag about this—I just wish more young women knew that sometimes, it really is genetics. And baby fat.
The secret to looking young forever: wash your face with this all-in-one skincare product once a day for 20 years and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING else.
Embracing midlife—without being mid about it
Now that I’m almost 40, I would like to age a little. Heck, I’d love to meet a man my own age. A guy who isn’t trying to date my 25-yr-old friends instead—like the stray we met at the bar, who was in his mid-30s but still hitting on women who don’t remember 9/11. I would love to go out with a man who looks at me and says, “You look young, but spiritually, you’re 39. You look like you can vividly recall what life was like before Al Gore invented the internet.”2
I think about aging a lot now because, despite looking so young, there are still so many things I want to accomplish. In my creative life, I feel like I’m just getting started. But it’s hard to accept that once you turn 40, your secret dream to be heralded as the next big thing might be behind you.
Lately I find myself seeking inspiration from artists who aren’t letting their age stop them from pursuing their creative dreams. Namely, women in their 40s who are writing and directing their own films, producing their own comedy shows, building communities of like-minded creatives, and rockin’ it in their fourth decade here on earth. Your 40s are technically middle age, mid-life. But I don’t want my 40s to be mid, as the kids say. I want them to be awesome…and maybe even fun!
Better late (blooming) than never
I’ve always been a bit of a late bloomer. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 23. I didn’t secure my first professional, full-time job until I turned 34. I finally got my own apartment without roommates at the ripe ‘ol age of 35, and I didn’t become a published author until I turned 38.
Me when I was 27. Yes I was twee and played the ukulele.
Me today at 39. Yes I still wear bright colors and Care Bear tees.
I think I hang out with people younger than me because I relate to them more in a weird way. I still find myself stumbling through life, wondering if I will ever get it together. I’m not even sure what that means anymore. The older I get, the more I realize how little I know about the world and my own life path.
“Men have a midlife crisis, women reinvent themselves,” is something that Nora Ephron technically did not say, but according to Google, a lot of people think she did so it might as well be her who said it first.
Now that I’m (almost) 40, I have a strong urge to reinvent myself. Maybe I’ll finally figure out how to harness the wisdom I’ve gained with age and my youthful appearance to create a kick-ass next decade—one where spiritually, I’m happy, healthy, thriving, and still getting carded every time I walk into a bar.
I haven’t seen The Substance because I don’t like horror movies, but this is basically the plot, right?
Sorry, this is a joke for people of a certain age.