I’m venting. I’m seriously so tired of hearing people say things like “Sixty is the new fifty.” Or forty. Or even thirty. This morning, on one of the talk shows, I caught about 30 seconds of the guest going on and on about how sixty-year olds should go mountain climbing and have pajama parties and join Facebook and meet people on Match.com, whatever they want. OK, I thought, I like the general concept. But then the host asked, “So sixty is the new forty?” I froze. The guest chirpily answered, “No, sixty is the new twenty!!!”
OK, folks, here’s the deal. Sixty isn’t anything other than sixty. Got it? If you are twenty, and you like to jump up and down on a bed and have pillow fights, does that make twenty the new five?” If you are twenty, you are twenty. If you are sixty, you are sixty. Sorry, but the iPad doesn’t, to my knowledge, include a time machine.
I know what people are trying to say, but I’d like it said in a different way, a meaningful way: Sixty-year olds are redefining what it means to be sixty. We aren’t any age other than what we are. We are simply giving a new definition of what that is. My sixty three isn’t twenty (A quick check of my body parts will confirm that). But, my sixty three is vastly different than my parents’ sixty three.
Sixty year olds now have access to all the wonders medical science can provide, including replacing or repairing a lot of internal and external body parts. Medications and nutrition keep us alive longer. Gyms are on every street corner. And the internet allows up to connect with each other in a way that our parents’ generation couldn’t have conceived of (I met my Now Husband Dan on Match.com).
So, please, give us the respect we deserve. I’ve worked hard to get to where I am today. I wouldn’t change that for anything. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to magically change some things (two, for example). It just means I like me and I like me at sixty three. I’m not the “new twenty.” I’m the “new sixty three.”
I’m finished now.
Life in the Boomer Lane 
ericahostetler
June 16, 2010
While I do like the 60 being 30 part, I also really like redefining what 60 or 55 or whatever, looks like. We are all a vastly different age inside than our mirrors show us, but that age is timeless . I don’t know if I feel 30 or 20 or 42…I’m just myself and if that makes me want to wear non-dowdy clothes no matter how old I am, then great!
Thanks for the fun posts.
lifeintheboomerlane
June 17, 2010
That’s a great way to put it. I never think any age feeling like anything in particular. I have each day, and it’s up to me to create whatever that day looks like.
Cate
June 16, 2010
Thank you! I think the “sixty is the new fifty” trend is all about reassuring ourselves that aging isn’t really aging, that it’s possible to stop or reverse the clock if we just wish really hard, stamp our feet 3 times and wake up in Oz. The reality is we all age and our youth, the relevant bit that is, takes up about 30% of our life span. Sad, isn’t it? We’re so obsessed with a time of life that basically involves the wonders of puberty, the terrifying perils of dating, the excruciating and expensive agony of obtaining an education that will take 30 years to pay off, the 50/50 chance of pledging ourselves to someone who will leave us for a younger model after we’ve given them a career, children and our youth, devoting the best years of our lives to toiling away for some monolithic corporation run by thieves who suck the life out of us so we can buy their overpriced products, see our families for 20 minutes a week and take a 2 week vacation each year to some overpopulated cheesy resort that takes 2 years to pay off, watch our kids move out and take all our savings with them as they start the process themselves, be forced into early retirement because they can hire 2 children for the price of us or the executives have bankrupted the company and taken our pensions with them. This is what we’re all obsessed to perpetuate?? I am happy to be past that time of my life, body and mind still more or less intact. And I have another 30 years or so to look forward to. How do we spend those if we’re not 60 trying to be the new 40? It’s actually quite liberating if we stop worrying about fooling ourselves we can be 10 or 20 years younger than we are.
lifeintheboomerlane
June 17, 2010
So true that many of us sadly want to reassure ourselves that aging isn’t aging. We see photos of older actresses in magazines that scream “She hasn’t aged a bit!”What a terrible, backhanded compliment. It’s so sad. I’ve been told my entire life that I look “so young for my age.” I now no longer take that as a compliment. I own my age and everything it represents. It’s the best time of my life. Bring it on.