Spectator by Seema Goswami: This won’t age well | Hindustan Times
The late Patrick Stewart, at 73, married his third wife Sunny Ozell. (SHUTTERSTOCK) Second marriages, late motherhood, long hair after 60 – the Age Police loves to shame us for it all. It’s time they grew upWhat happens when two celebrities of a certain age get married, having found love a second time around? You will be entirely unsurprised to learn that the entire internet has an opinion. While there are some enlightened souls who restrict themselves to congratulating the happy couple and wishing them a blissful married life, others are not quite so positive. So, you have endless commentary about how pointless it is to get married in middle age; how useless it is to enter a union that cannot result in children; how they should be thinking of their children’s marriages instead; and so on and on and on.
The pattern is all too familiar. You only have to do something even slightly out of the norm, when the Age Police come calling. They have an opinion on every aspect of your life, no matter how private and sacrosanct. And all of it has to do with how many years you have spent on the planet.
Marriage, of course, is the biggest minefield. Marry in your early twenties and people will line up to tell you that you are not mature enough to take such an important life decision. Marry in your late thirties and there will be much tut-tutting about how you have left it too late. Marrying after too short a courtship invites the same carping as delaying getting married until you are absolutely sure. Marry the second time round and the inevitable jokes about the triumph of hope over experience will do the rounds — but with a little age-related bite to them.
The decision to have children is similarly fraught. Have them too young or too soon after marriage and you will be told a) you are potentially ruining your career b) you are not old enough to deal with parenthood and c) you should wait until your relationship and life has stabilised. Conversely, if you wait until your mid or late thirties, you will constantly be warned that you have left it too late and it’s going to be so hard to squeeze a couple of sprogs out before your biological clock times out.
But the Age Police doesn’t shy away from sweating the smaller stuff. Start resistance training after the age of 60, for instance, and you will be bombarded with advice as to how you are risking your health by lifting weights at your advanced age. (Pay no attention; you can start strength training at any age and your muscles will respond appropriately.)
How women of a certain age dress and present themselves is fertile ground for the Age Police. The admonishments keep coming. Cut your hair short; you can’t carry off long hair at your age. Lengthen the hems of your skirts and dresses; nobody wants to see those wrinkly knees. Is that red lipstick really age-appropriate; you’d be better off with a neutral beige.
The sad truth is that no matter how old or young we are, there is no escaping the criticism of the Age Police. We will constantly be told that we are the wrong age for something or the other. Why? What is the need to limit ourselves in this way when, at the end of the day, age is just a number that we are at complete liberty to ignore?
