#347 - Being 50

This is the first time I have thought of aging. Being 50 it is impossible to say that time did stand still. It did for a very long time for me. I was often mistaken to be twenty years younger than I am. Which meant at 40 people thought I was 20. I now don't look 50 but 40. Which is still not young. However, I was thinking, why would people want to look young - it would be far better to have BEEN young when you were young.

So in that sense, I don't mind and I don't care. I was young and when I was young I behaved and acted young. As young as I could be. I acted my age. I didn't feel compelled to 'grow up' and 'be responsible' which in Singapore just meant obeying everything the government. Get a job. Get a flat. Get married. Have kids. Vote for the PAP. Don't question alternatives. Don't support ideas. Don't speak up. Be mannerly. Polite. Study hard. Work in a fancy office. Be judgmental to your fellow human beings. Be a racist. Be a homophobe. Be a jingoistic nationalist who believes that Singapore is the centre of the universe. Think that Malaysians are dirty and lazy. Believe that nepotism and corruption if it happens in Singapore is ok. Read the Straits Times. Believe that neoliberalism is the only way of life. Consume. Consume like there is no tomorrow. Believe that indigenous peoples are stupid and that white people are clever. Cherish and worship the GDP. your spirituality should never interfere with your civilian life and under no circumstances develop a conscience. Do not take risks. Keep contributing to the CPF. Just keep doing that ad infinitum. And that is being young.

I don't EVER remember the obsession with looking young in Asia. In Asia, if you were old, you were experienced. You had wisdom. You were venerated. In Asia, there was no stigma and existential crisis when you turned 40. You were celebrated the older you got. This was not an issue.

There are a few things which we have imported from the West which has annoyed me greatly. Well, more than a few - but the two things that just piss me off are the cult of youth and the obsession with food. First, the cult of youth.

The first time I encountered this thing about age was when Peter turned 40. He spent the entire day, week, month, year, feeling sorry for himself and 'past it'. I said to him, come on, let's have a party!!! He was no. I want to lie face down in the bed. So I phoned my mom and said, is there a thing about turning 40 in Singapore? And she said, No, why? I said, ok thanks, thought I'd just check cos I don't remember this - people feeling miserable about being 40. 

As the decades wore on this obsession got worse and worse. Plastic surgery which was previously used for burns victims or reconstructive surgery for people who had gotten into terrible accidents were now being used by young women to get rid of noses and faces they didn't like... that happened when I was a teenager. Now, increasingly, it was being used by young people, people in their 20s and 30s to look younger. Botox for lips which were fuller, and all kinds of liposuction and padding for people who could not diet past the point of where they wanted their bodies. The pioneer in all this was Cher, the beloved of the gay and transsexual community. Women had for quite sometime now been enlarging their breasts to comical proportions of course, but now, well, now the results there for all to see. People go on TV, appear on TV, to earn some money for their painful procedures by broadcasting their transformations. 

As wonderful and weird looking as Cher and her merry band of Transformers appear, there is always an uncanny look about them. What makes them human has been slowly erased and the natural flaws and asymmetries which would have aged with time remain chiseled and untouched. People who undergo these treatments spend hours and hours before and after the treatments staring into mirrors and seeking out flaws to eradicate them. They do so with an arsenal of make up and chemicals - bottles of promises and spells, forever primping and plumping parts of their face and bodies which they have never found peace with, many who can afford it, looking for the next masochistic high, the next territory to conquer, to come under the surgeon's scalpel. 

The irony is that to be young is to be carefree, to not bother what other people think, to make that journey of self acceptance and discovery, to find the limits of the known worlds. I suppose you could say that undergoing plastic surgery is a kind of liminal experience, but I also think that part of being young is to not self obsess. To look outwards, bring your own contribution, your own unique spin to things, not to fall in line with what another person thinks is beautiful. In owning your own imperfections, you widen the definition of beautiful.

Whatever it is, plastic surgery is here to stay, and botox is part of life, and those who refuse it will claim their age and we must now do so proudly. Ironically, no matter how hard women try, no matter how much crap we inject into your faces, after a certain age men - why are men so shallow, huh? - will always prefer younger women. It is not shallow, but insecurity. Younger women, and you see it in the untrammeled and slightly doe eyed look they have, they have no experience in life. They don't know any better, how can they? Men who end up with them, the much younger women, are telling the world that they are unable to relate to their equal. They indict themselves. Women who try to keep down with the men and their youthful selves do themselves a disservice. I look at women in their teens, 20s and 30s, even 40s and think, I don't want to be that anymore. In their faces and their expressions, just everything there is the oncoming traffic of life which they will have to dodge. I did that and I have the adventures I have lived. I have my hard worn experience and the life I have led. I am NOT going to do this to myself. I am not going to cheat myself of the years and wisdom I have collected like treasure, for the sake of an idiotic man or the envy - the weird envy and bitching - of my fellow sisters. No. This is who I am and I am going to grateful and thankful that I have had this.

I claim my age, I claim my life, I claim my experience. I will treat my body well, look after it, and respect it, the same way I would treat an older person. I am that older person now. I am not going to have an argument with the illusion of Time. A fruitless, pointless argument with the passing of each day. If you wanted to not grow old, then you will like, Monroe and Dean and Cobain and Hendrix and Winehouse, die young. And that I have not done. I am going to spend the rest of my time living it instead of wishing and trying to be younger. So, here is to being 50. I will celebrate it with thanks.