This simple question could be very difficult to answer for women in general I thought. So I put a poll on Facebook about this last month. The reactions varied. A friend wrote: she prefered not to tell her real age. When she answered honestly, she’d got asked again “How do you stay fabulous at your age?”. Another friend added she once experienced when she openly shared her age, the following question came “Why don’t you get anymore kids? At your age it is still not difficult to get pregnant”.
Forever young
Being a person who don’t have a problem sharing her real age ( I am 40 years old), I now understand better why this 4 words question is hard to answer for some people. I thought before it was for vanity reason not telling the real age as I believed most people want to stay young forever but apparently not. What annoys people are the following questions after How old are you? When someone asks you one of the following questions, you have a choice not to answer it. Just smile and leave.
The poll
58 friends responded to the poll. 6 female friends answered they didn’t have a problem with telling their real age. The rest was of those who prefered not to answer the question. To my surprise some of them were male. So I was wrong. I assumed this was exclusively a female issue. A friend pointed out that this could also be culture related. In Dutch culture people doesn’t make a fuss about this unlike in Indonesian culture. What do you think? Does people at your place tend not to answer this question?
To my beautiful sobrina: Happy 25th birthday B!
Chez Lorraine 
Though age at 75 is something to think about, it’s no problem to me. But I can see that follow-up questions can be annoying -especially for women. However I don’t understand that someone should feel ill at ease after the compliment ““How do you stay fabulous at your age?” one of your friends got. I think that’s quite flattering actually.
Perhaps that question might imply that at certain age you can’t stay fabulous?
It might indeed. That obviously depends on one’s mindset, in what perspective one decides to perceive those words.
Perhaps people who don’t want to disclose their age also think it is a private matter. I can totally understand if they don’t feel comfortable to disclose their age to someone they are hardly know or don’t feel close to. That is a subject that I tried not to ask at the first encounter, especially Europeans.
But I believe people can pretty much tell your age by many factors therefore there is no point hiding your age. If their initial assumption was wrong then they will be shocked – like in my experience, I always receive surprised looks when I share my age (37), mostly think I am in early 30-ish 🙂
Agree Indah. By holding that poll I got several answers of the question why some people are quite reluctant to honestly tell their age. And yes, it is funny to experience that shocking look when the age guess doesn’t match 🙂
Good thought and good way of thinking!!
I personally don’t mind sharing my age. Of course I dont like it if my honest answer is followed by a judgemental question. But I really dont mind. Great blog by the way 🙂
Thank you. I want to give an honest answer and ignore the annoying questions followed. And thank you for stopping by.