40 is NOT the new 30. It's still 40.

Lately there has been a rash of articles how 40 is the new 30. Which I guess means 45 is the new 35. I’m really not able to figure this one out, because no matter how you look at it you are still 40.

At forty I didn’t go to the DMV and the lady there tell me that I was in luck, my license would now reflect that I was thirty. Some weird new thing where the clock sets back. Daylight savings time for age.

The basis for the articles state that we exercise more and look younger than our previous generations. I don’t think I look any younger than my mother did at my age. I look better than my grandmother, but that’s because all she had was Ponds Cold cream and lard to slap on her face.

How can they say most people in their forties look in their thirties? Wouldn’t that just be the new look of forty? If I have more energy in my forties that’s because I’m not working along with raising school age kids who have activities after activates.

I don’t know about you, but seemingly with the strike of my fortieth birthday and the fast passing sequential years, suddenly..

• My knees hurt
• My back ached when I slept wrong (And even when I didn’t)
• The skin on my legs is a bit thinner
• Actors in their twenties were no longer hot, they were cute kids.
• I lost the ability to see small print.
• Red was remarkably a better shade of lipstick for me.

I don’t recall experiencing any of those in my 30’s.

They say diet and exercise will help you feel young.  “Feel” being the operative word. Honestly, take a look at skinny woman that is 50. She looks … 50. Add some weight to her, you take at least ten years off of her face. Bottom line, to feel young, diet and exercise, to look young, eat a Twinkie. I’ll take the Twinkie please, I’m too old to be obsessed with my body. It eventually will all hang anyhow, no matter what I do. For my body, I’ll stick with the chair exercises I used to teach my seniors at the retirement home and focus more on exercising my mind, thank you. I’ll need that more at sixty-five than tight skin under my biceps that doesn’t flap.

If 50 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 30, does that make 30 the new 20? When do we age? If we’re really the new 40 when we’re 50, then we’re actually 30 because 40 is the new 30, which makes us really 20?

UG! Too confusing.

I don’t know about you, but I am embracing the aging process.

In your forties and beyond, you are an adult. There’s a level of respect that comes from people. I can look at a magazine in the store without someone telling me to buy it or put it down. I can take the fast moving ‘I’m way over 21 and don’t need to be carded’ line into the casino.

I look forward to the days when Polyester is my fabric of choice and you know what, I can see how that happens. I hate tight clothes and already hate restrictive clothing.

I can’t wait until I can wear bright colors, mix matched patterns, clothing from decades earlier and get away with that. Wait, I already do. Ha.

My plan, you know is to achieve the age where I embarrass my grown children by being that crazy old lady who always has a drink in her hand, toilet paper attached to the back of my pants and screams out, “Frank!” for no reason.

I’m absolutely fine if the ’40 is the new 30’ rule doesn’t apply to me.  Growing old is a part of life. We don’t have to like it, we do however have no choice but to accept it.