This is 55: Margit Detweiler Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"I might like to go back to 25, but only if I could keep the comfort, ease and smarts of my 55-year-old self."
From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”
Here, Margit Detweiler, founder of , a community for Gen X women, responds. - Sari Botton
📢 Next Tuesday, December 13th at 8:00 PM ET / 5:00 PM PT, TueNight is hosting a virtual house party/storytelling event called "#1 Daughter: Who Said We're the Responsible Ones?!"
Details from Margit/TueNight: “The event format (the house party) is a play on hybrid events, so this will be fun and interactive—gathering women to share stories about what it means to be a daughter (who is responsible for everything) through the lens of aging. We want to explore, honor, and celebrate what it means to be a “#1 Daughter”—from the roles and responsibilities we carry within our families and community (whether you're eldest, only child or not!).
Our storytellers include Ophira Eisenberg (NPR), Omi Burney-Scott (Black Girls Guide to Menopause), Kathy Cano-Murillo, Mimi Ison, Melody Godfred, and our TueNight founder, Margit!
Plus, gifts! Every registrant will automatically be entered to win a snazzy gift box filled with curated items from women-owned businesses that is valued at over $250!”📢
is the founder of TueNight, a website, Substack community and live event series dedicated to elevating the stories of Gen-X women. In addition to being a three-time Webby honoree/ and nominee for TueNight.com, the “TueDo List” was named one of the top 10 women-led newsletters for 2019 by Forbes. She was a music critic and managing editor at the Philadelphia City Paper and led digital teams for RealSimple.com, EverydayHealth and AOL. Margit is also president of Gyrate Media, an award-winning content strategy and editorial development firm based in Brooklyn.
How old are you?
55 But I just wrote 54 by accident first, so, that tells you everything
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
Apparently, 54… but also 40. I definitely don’t feel young but also, not old. The first tagline for my website/ community TueNight was feeling curiously young and old at the same time. It’s this strange phenomenon we experience as we age. I started the website when I was 45 to share stories that I wasn’t seeing in mainstream media about how my friends were living and rejecting the status quo for 40-year-olds. Now at 55 I’m not sure things are so curious; I’ve moved into the definitively older category.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
I think I seem a little young for my age, to others. My husband and I don’t have children so it makes us the fun Aunt and Uncle who like to romp around with the nieces and nephew. So much so that when we set up my niece to meet with some friends of ours in Portland she was shocked when she met them. “You didn’t tell me your friends were old old! Like, they have kids?” She thinks of us as like in our 20s. I am sure of it.
Now, inside my skin and bones, where it creaks, and stabs, and seizes up, I do not feel super young. That said, most of my closest pals are like me: we still go to see new bands, we’re up on the latest tech (mostly), we wear bright red lipstick, do silly things, we don’t live ordinary lives. It’s more a state of mind than an age.
The first tagline for my website/ community TueNight was feeling curiously young and old at the same time. It’s this strange phenomenon we experience as we age. I started the website when I was 45 to share stories that I wasn’t seeing in mainstream media about how my friends were living and rejecting the status quo for 40-year-olds.
What do you like about being your age?
Experience, baby. In a way, by the time we get into our 50s—and much more so as we age, we’re a sort of superhero. We accumulate history and experience and love and loss and we can anticipate a problem and come up with a myriad of solutions.
What is difficult about being your age?
Knees. Back. Feet.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
I have this little 3x5 card that I filled out when I was 13 or so that made plans for me to be a Solid Gold dancer or a marine biologist. Well, I’m sorry to say neither happened.
That concept of not really understanding that things might turn out the way you’d anticipated feels like a 40-something kind of attitude. Now in my 50s, well, I pretty much know how I got here, I’ve made peace with it, AND there have been so many surprises along the way. In my 20s, working as a music editor/ critic at an alt-weekly in Philadelphia, I thought I’d be a newspaper journalist for the rest of my life. As if it was a very solid, secure career path. Ahem.
When I got a gig as an editorial director for AOL’s Digital City in 1999 I was a given a lot of raised eyebrows. “Why would you go to the Internet??” Candidly, the job paid a lot more and meant I wouldn’t have to sell CDs to eat lunch. But it was kind of a happy accident that, in hindsight, gave me a bit of an edge. I now work in digital media—on my own website and helping others develop digital “content” (it took a long time to make peace with that word). But there are many days I miss that scrappy old analog world of inky newsprint.
My husband and I don’t have children so it makes us the fun Aunt and Uncle who like to romp around with the nieces and nephew. So much so that when we set up my niece to meet with some friends of ours in Portland she was shocked when she met them. “You didn’t tell me your friends were old old!”
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
Aging has given me a life filter, the ability to decide pretty quickly what I will and won’t do. You tend to make quicker decisions—is this a cocktail party I want to go to on this rainy night when there’s a new episode of The White Lotus on? Heck, no. But aging can also make you a little less willing to take risks, which is the danger. Maybe, Jennifer Coolidge herself, star of The White Lotus, is at said cocktail party (this is New York after all) and you would have missed meeting the comedic legend who would like to star in the screenplay you’re working on.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
Oooh boy. This one gets to the heart of things. I’ve been working on a bit of speculative fiction around this idea, how our identity shifts as we age and what pieces of our identity do we necessarily have to leave behind in order to move forward in life? (I haven’t written fiction in decades so the phrase “working on” is quite literal.)
I experienced a big shift when diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2016 (I’m a six-years-going survivor) and it recentered what was important for me. Also, my hair grew back in this shock of white which I keep short. I feel like having cancer in a strange way helped me embrace my age but also moved me a little closer to death and the finality of life. Which is to say spending $400 on coloring one’s hair is obscene, but also that life is short and we have to revel in every millisecond.
Now, inside my skin and bones, where it creaks, and stabs, and seizes up, I do not feel super young. That said, most of my closest pals are like me: we still go to see new bands, we’re up on the latest tech (mostly), we wear bright red lipstick, do silly things, we don’t live ordinary lives. It’s more a state of mind than an age.
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
I’m looking forward to reaching 80. I hope I do. Heck, I hope I can comfortably reach 100 and that this place is still habitable. This planet is a truly awesome place—I’d like to see more and more of it.
I missed the having kids thing—most days I am fine with that and am glad for it. As much as I love kids, it was never something that felt quite right to me. But some days I feel a twinge of sadness.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
I might like to go back to 25, but only if I could keep the comfort, ease and smarts of my 55-year-old self.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
My mom is also a cancer survivor and she’s reached 84-years-old—she’s a brilliant crossword-junkie whiz who knows her way around a smartphone (she got our family on Prodigy, very early on, back in the 80s!) and is always up on what’s current.
is someone to me who ages incredibly well, with her own inimitable style, lack of plastic-surgeried-anything, and a wizened punk-rock grace…and those lace-up combat boots she always wears.I feel like having cancer in a strange way helped me embrace my age but also moved me a little closer to death and the finality of life.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
Embracing my natural hair color as I mentioned, and I don’t wear flippy vintage skirts like I used to, oh ten years ago. I don’t know if it’s the era, the pandemic, or my age but I am all about athleisure. Still, I’m a bit of a fashion hound, and I recently bought this pink suit from Argent and want to wear it to every possible event. Healthwise I need to make more adjustments and amp up a regular routine. Walking my beagle and a bit of light stretching ain’t cutting it.
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
To become complacent—and it’s challenging. Whether in politics, work or culture. As a young adult I remember looking at my parents’ rich album collection and asking them, “Hey why don’t you still go out to see concerts or listen to music the way you used to?” Other tasks and priorities had taken their place. Those luxurious moments to discover new music, spend time with music fell to the wayside. I now see—and feel— how that can happen and remind myself to make time for discovery. It’s so worth it.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
Celebrate. You are here on this planet; that is a gift. I always celebrate but usually in a small, meaningful way like a dinner with my husband or close friends. For my 50th I took a few meaningful trips with a few different friends and it was the best thing ever. I wish I could find the time—and budget!—to do that annually.
Amazing! I love the header picture with the enviably fabulous swoop of gleaming white hair, and I gasped at the gloriously 90s desk photo (and only partly because I was like, girl, sit up, your poor back! haha). This is the kind of story I find immensely valuable -- someone not too much older than me, whose story both resonates with where I am now, and also calls me to take aim at the kind of existence I want for myself in the next decade of my life.
Another wonderful glimpse into a life, very much unlike mine (I was never an urban hipster). I definitely wouldn't choose to be 25 again except for the body! I share Margit's admiration for Patti Smith, whom I've loved and followed and listened to and admired for nearly 50 years. In strange coincidence (or kismet), I just went to see her and was so uplifted by a 76-year-old woman with long gray hair commanding the stage, sharing glimpses of her remarkable life (through photos and stories) and being, as always, her true, unvarnished self.