“Telling me I don’t look my age is not a compliment”

This is a post by a lady on fetlife, and my answer to it.

sweet-reverie (30F babygirl Antarctica)
April 18, 2019
Link to original post

Telling me I don’t look my age is not a compliment [repost]

I want to address some comments I received that were meant as compliments. Those along the lines of “you don’t look [30]!” or “your ass doesn’t look a day over 18” and such things. I realize these are meant as flattery and lines like these are often told to women who are not 19 by people who find them attractive, but let me tell you right now, these are not kind compliments. They are backhanded, offensive, and cruel.

When you compliment a woman by saying she looks younger than she is, what you are actually saying is that women of a certain age are not viewed as attractive/desirable/fuckable/enticing/(insert word here) and since the woman you are giving your “compliment” to is any or all of these things, then she is somehow removed from other women who ALL fall into the unwanted category because of the number of years they have spent on this planet. You are saying she should feel special because her age does not detract from her desirability. Seriously?! What does that say about how we feel about women and aging? The compliment implies that we as an entire society think there is something wrong with older women.

I get it, we are a youth obsessed culture, for numerous reasons. And hello, I myself am a little, so conveying the appearance of youth is appealing to me. But I am [30], and that freaking rocks! I totally have enough life experience to like take care of myself and pay bills and discuss global issues and stuffs. Super! I am also healthier now than I was at 19, physically and mentally because I have a greater understanding and more experience on how to best take care of myself.

I am so incredibly excited [to be in my 30s]. And I am so not flattered when you tell me I look 19. You are wrong, I look [30] because spoiler alert

I am [30].

this is a repost of a writing I wrote a just over a year ago

My answer:

Okeanos
April 19, 2019

Hi! A friend of mine loved this post, so I stopped by to read it. If you don’t mind me saying, I do not agree with you. At the risk of repeating what may have already been stated in the comments above, the following statement:

When you compliment a woman by saying she looks younger than she is, what you are actually saying is that women of a certain age are not viewed as attractive/desirable/fuckable/enticing/(insert word here)…

This is a non-sequitur at multiple levels.

When you give someone a compliment for their young looks, you are doing just that, you are not “actually saying” anything else, really. But if you must try and theorize about what could be conceivably implied by such a compliment, then that could only be the acknowledgement of the overwhelmingly accepted fact that younger looks are better than older looks.

It is a non-sequitur to associate the compliment with womanhood in particular, because everyone hates getting older and looking older, not just women.

It is also a non-sequitur to associate the compliment with the offerer’s sexual interests in you. A sexually incompatible person could also make such a compliment to you, exclusively in order to make you feel better, acknowledging that you would probably like to hear that, because everyone likes to hear that. You don’t? That makes you a trifling exception to a (practically) universal rule, so you cannot blame someone for not having guessed that.

The wish to stop time and look young is one of the most broadly held social norms, and it is a perfectly benign one. (Because not all of them are.) It is not wise to blame an unsuspecting person for making a compliment that is in perfect alignment with social norm, let alone call such a compliment “backhanded, offensive, and cruel.” That’s completely bonkers.

Moreover, this new age trend of pointing at behavior that has up until now been seen as perfectly normal and labeling it as offensive or otherwise “non-politically correct” using some pretty bizarre mental acrobatics is completely bonkers on a grand scale. All these (predominantly youngsters) are under the impression that they are re-inventing the world, while what they are in fact doing is engaging in pointless bickering, and trying to form their stupid little in-groups that differentiate them from the out-group based on “this world is sooo hurting me” nonsense.

The world needs changing in many ways, this definitely is not one of them.