My husband and I play a game. We're at a restaurant: "How old do you think the woman at the next table is?" I'll say.
"Fifty-five," he'll reply.
I don't know why my husband likes to play the game. I always win.
"Seventy," I'll tell him. "Face: plastic surgery. Dress: Junior department at Sax. Makeup: professionally applied. Hair: latest style."
We don't bother guessing the age of obviously old women. They've aged the way women have aged since Eve. Wthout interference. Without subterfuge.
But who wants that? Who wants to just wrinkle and crape and hang? To be obviously old is to in many ways be dead. At parties, no one is interested in the obviously old; they're patronizingly tolerated, and if spoken to at all, it's in simple declarative sentences. No one asks an old man what he thinks about Trump. No one asks an old woman whether Kim will stay married to Kanye.
To be vital and interesting is never to cede the floor. To vamp and flirt and dare age is what makes us continue to thrill at life.
So renew your Vogue subscription and give me the name of your plastic surgeon.
