35 Going on 36 

Today is my 35th birthday.

Yes, I am a woman and proud of my age and not afraid to say it in a publication, crowded room or to the people I love. For reasons that are ridiculous, women are supposed to keep their age a secret and feign insult or injury when faced with the question, "How old are you?" This query is often followed by gasping and swooning, huffing and puffing, turning on one's heel, blatant refusals to respond or a bold-faced lie.

In a culture obsessed with youth, women are socialized to bob and weave when hit with this age-old question -- pun intended. Instead of embracing the fact that they have lived to see another year, and acknowledging all that they have accomplished, overcome and surpassed, women play coy, or construct this air of mystery around something that should be celebrated instead of downplayed or dismissed.

As luck would have it, an episode of Sex and the City that explored the character Charlotte's fear of turning 35 was on TV last night. She and the girls took a jaunt to Atlantic City to celebrate her birthday, learning more about themselves in the process. One of the things that they discovered is that wherever you are in life is alright. In a nutshell, they learned that there is no need to go backwards, to allow other people to define you, and that it is OK to gamble and lose, the latter being a metaphor for the many issues in their complicated lives.

While I am not a fan of taking cultural cues from television shows, I am a fan of taking good advice ... preferably before you need it. What these women learned is what many women must learn: not to be complicit in their misery by embracing outdated and learned behaviors that cause fear, despair and pain in their lives.

Making age a major factor in the lives of women is just another way of exercising social control. And one of the ways that people exercise social control is to define who you are and what you should be doing by establishing benchmarks. When you fail to reach these goals or to obtain these possessions by a certain age, then you are a failure. For example, if you reach the age of 35 and you're a woman and unmarried, then there has to be something wrong with you. But if you are a man who is 35 or older and unmarried, then you are selective, not defective.

Women and men are held to different standards in society and age is one of them. Just like many men measure themselves by their wallets, many women measure themselves by their looks, which are inherently tied to their age. Thus, the proliferation of women who look like teenagers from behind and "seasoned" from the front -- á la Mariah Carey (who, by the way, looks fantastic and would look even better if she dressed in the realm of her real age).

Even celebrities who look amazing will not openly embrace their "real" age. Catherine Zeta-Jones and I are the same age? Umm, OK. Beyoncé is 10 years younger than me? Sure. Although there are some exceptions, it is conventional wisdom that when a woman hits age 40 in the entertainment industry, her options are limited and her career is compromised because of the youth orientation of the business. Flight attendants have battled ageism for decades, being fired or demoted because they no longer fulfill dominant standards of beauty according to age, height and weight. Those are real-world reasons why many women recoil when confronted with aging.

What are the real-world consequences when women fear getting older? We sometimes make unwise decisions, like having plastic surgery from someone who is not board certified; we engage in extreme dieting that leaves us with conditions like osteoporosis or renal failure; we incur insurmountable credit card debt from too much retail therapy; we walk around with distorted collagen- and botox-injected faces crying inside beneath immobile smiles; we have diminished self-esteem; we become self-loathing; we become depressed and focus on what we should have, as opposed to what we do have. Therefore, I publicly embrace and tell my age to undermine those who would have me think that I am not perfectly imperfect and where I should be is not good enough, never knowing where I have been.

To coin a phrase from über media mogul Oprah Winfrey while I do not know everything, what I know for sure is that I am happy to be here, in good health, with a wonderful family and tremendous friends. No, I have not met some of the benchmarks set by others and some that I set for myself. But I am still here and where I am supposed to be at this time.

When I get the notion to begin tearing myself down because of what many perceive as failures, I think about my friends Hope, Nicole and Camille who did not live to see 25. I am awed that I have lived 10 years longer than they, when they had so much life in them. These were dynamic, spiritual, and beautiful women who left early, leaving behind a legacy of living each day to the fullest extent. Today, I salute them and all of those young people who have gone before us, and I ask that we remember them when we begin to complain about being granted another year on this earth.

I am happily 35 going on 36, as we used to say when we were kids who wanted to be older. We need to welcome everything that we have, the people in our lives and celebrate the addition of another year on this journey called life.