Tact
Inquire about the age of a woman: Please not?
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Does the old rule still apply that it is tactless, inquire about a woman’s age? For our author, it’s not just politeness that counts.
Karina Lübke
Of course, girlfriends get birthday greetings and flowers. Above all, however, I give myself the question “Tell me, how old have you actually gotten?”, When this can no longer be seen from the corresponding number of candles on the cake. I either know it anyway or I don’t care. I myself have moved into a retirement home since I was thirty: As long as I don’t want to take out term life insurance, nobody is interested in my year of birth. If someone actually asks how old I am now, I say in a semi-friendly manner: “Old enough to ignore this question.” Often it is added provocatively: “Do you have a problem with your age?” I then: “No, but you apparently.”
What’s so interesting about age?
Why do people want to know the age of women so stubbornly, what is that to them? Do you want to assess the risk of whether I will die spontaneously and spoil their evening? Judge whether I look good or bad “for my age”? See if it’s still worth flirting with me? Or are they, as is so often the case nowadays, simply curious – which, in contrast to curiosity, is not a virtue, but a weakness? No, I have no problem with my age – but neither do I have to provide information. Because the “harmless” question is always a question of value. Age discrimination is real and feminine: a committee process. Men in their mid-50s can easily change jobs or become president, but applications from older women are rejected. There is a system behind this: Simone Schmollak quoted a department head in “Die Zeit”: “We do not take old women, they can no longer be shaped.”
Depending on the industry, on the 40th birthday a whole cosmos of female life and creativity is slowly faded out and then completely faded out: Fade to gray. As a result, society lacks the wealth of female experience, the public expression of all ages – and young women have role models. This continues to cement the male view of male interests and life worlds as “normality”, a man trix into which women should try to fit in throughout their lives.
The magical 30
Young women are the stem cells of society. Between the ages of 22 and 29, they can become EVERYTHING for a magical seven years: startup, Instagram star, globetrotter, physicist, Olympic athlete, player woman, child prodigy. But from the age of 30 at the latest, they are also put into the reproductive duty of finding the “right one” in order to get on with future taxpayers. They are on the job market with reservations – does she want children, could she have some, does she have any, does she want more, why doesn’t she have any? One only becomes free of it again when one has outgrown fertility. However, one is then absolved of all competence – intellectually as well as sexually.
For this reason, too, the age question is not appreciative, but derogatory. The personality unfolds in all its complexity with every fold! I just want to die young as late as possible and go down in history as the oldest child prodigy in the world. And for people looking for fresh meat who pretend I am a tin can that maliciously conceals the best-before date from them, I am indeed: inedible.