Discussion about this post

User's avatar
MaryAnn Johanson's avatar

I really hope all women can get away from lying about our ages! Because so many women do this, the world has no idea what it *really* looks like for a woman to be 40, or 60, or 80.

If I were going to care at all, I'd much rather someone thought, "She looks pretty good for 52" (my age right now, which I never lie about), instead of "Damn, she looks awful for 40!"

Expand full comment
Richard Grayson's avatar

I think a lot of people have to lie about their ages because of ageism in the business world. My father routinely lied about his age in the 1980s and 1990s. He was born in 1926 and after his and my grandfather's pants manufacturing business in NYC died in the 1970s (a victim of cheaper imports and the shift to jeans and more casual wear rather than the fine dress pants they made) and a business importing jeans from Hong Kong petered out, he became a sales rep for companies that made clothing for young men, mostly: Sasson, Bugle Boy, Guess, etc. He had always looked quite young -- when he took me to get my first public library card in Brooklyn, the librarian threw us out, telling him, "Take your baby brother out of here, kid, and stop wasting our time" -- and so he could easily pass for being decades younger (like me, except he had to dye his hair starting around 63 and I am 70 and still have mostly brown hair). I remember meeting him for dinner when he came to NYC from Florida for the menswear show at the old Coliseum at Columbus Circle, I walked down from my apartment on the Upper West Side and met him for dinner. We ran into some of his fellow salesmen, and I was introduced as his nephew. By that time, my name and photo were in newspapers a lot, and if asked if we were related, he'd tell people that he was my uncle and not my father. He hasn't done that since he retired. He is 95 and I am 70 and he now acknowledges me in public as his son.

I have never been able to lie about my age because I work in academia, and my CV gives away my undergrad, graduate and law degrees, and besides, I like telling people I started teaching college in 1975 when I was 23. Nobody cares how old an adjunct is.

Expand full comment
11 more comments...

No posts