For women, age is not just a number

Dear women, men, when they were put together, were horribly flawed. God, in his haste — let’s put it down to first-time experience — was quite the novice, forgetting to put in basic construct elements like a stable memory, regards for general hygiene, tact, code of conduct and etiquettes, and a general sense of overall sensibility. Which possibly explains why, in his second model, the now-panicking God went overboard ensuring that he packed in double the circuitry in the next prototype. But neither of the sexes should complain, they both got the longer and the shorter end of the stick, simultaneously for such was God’s clever compromise. But it has left men and women fighting for establishing supremacy forever. But today we aren’t talking about such heavy topics. The topic at hand is much lighter. What I wish to talk about is how the two creations of The Big Man view the problem of weight, if they view it as a problem at all! Because women, for no fault of theirs, are wired to exaggerate the effects of ageing. They combat this in two ways. The first, they never add the years to their age, thereby stopping the ageing process, so to speak. Secondly, they start complaining about bodies well in advance, like late teens say, so that an inculcation of the habit renders them innocuous to the maladies when they actually arrive. I have seen too many shows about young girls who ‘hate their calves’ or ‘want a smaller nose’ or think they have ‘disproportionate hands’ that when old age brings other (more pressing) issues, they only sound like a seamless extension of their youthful rants, a soft transition towards maturity. And weight remains a constant crib. On oneself it is always just a wee bit too much and a lady shall always resolutely share her tenacity to shed it over the next few weeks. All other women that she knows or talks about are decidedly overweight or horribly anorexic — there is no other possibility. This method of acceptance definitely has its advantages — you build self-confidence even if it is the blind kind. I am a man who had to accept baldness (as also shortness, roundness, and quasi-ugliness) well early so that age has only helped me get closer to what I always represented — a disgruntled old man. But at least I have shown grace. Or so I think. But I divest. This column, this moment, they both belong to women so let me not bring my plateful of woes in just yet. Women, please go ahead and voice your discontent with form and physique as much as you like. If not for you, plastic surgery wouldn’t be the glamour profession it is recognised to be today. Men deal with a protruding waistline the same way they deal with their receding hairline — they ignore it, even deny it, but all the while humbly accept it. Too much strife over such onslaughts of time and you will only increase your lot of worries, which will only serve to hasten the process of hair loss and weight pile-on. We can’t avoid it so we choose not to discuss, even amongst ourselves. We just know and meekly accept that we have made the transition to the undesirable side when pretty young girls will comfortably walk up and to talk to us, beginning the conversation with “Uncle”. There is no resuscitating such a blow to an ego!

The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine