"In With the New, But Out with the Old?"

    It’s just a New Years’ saying that affirms that what’s coming up is, we hope, better. But the sentiment in much of our culture sees “old” as even dreaded enough to say more broadly “out with it.”
    I remember that I was somewhat amused when I heard a twenty-nine year old gay man genuinely bemoan the fact that he was about to turn thirty. The specter of that age looming over him, he said, made him “feel old.” So, he told us, he needed to get some things done and find a partner before that happened — and while he “still had a chance.”
    To those of us who are quite a bit older, and who'd never go back to thirty again, unless it was guaranteed that we could take with us all we've learned from our experiences since, there’s something sad about feeling “old” at thirty.
    I’m not sure what “feeling old” even means. But it’s not meant positively. I know that’s so, because we take the statements, “You don’t look that old,” or “You don’t act that old,” as complements.
    Though the cult of youth is especially strong in gay male circles, it’s just another one of those larger cultural values our conditioning has internalized in us. Idealizing youth enables our consumerist economic system to sell youthfulness by marketing cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, physical fitness, clothing styles, and a lot else. It even helps sell the chemicals that alleviate our depression over “feeling old..."

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