I see you made an effort

Having slipped past the mid-century mark myself, I was looking forward to some empathetic chuckles with a fellow middle-ager musing on turning 49. Gurwitch is a Hollywood adjacent, secular jew with a preteen son - not insurmountable differences, but apparently still a gap too wide to forge. This is in no small part due to the fact she's narrowing in on 50 as a woman. For women in Hollywood, as Gurwitch notes, 50 is the new 80 in actress years. Meanwhile Tom Cruise at 58 is no doubt in lifts, sprinting across some soundstage shooting Mission Impossible 15. Liam Neeson at 68 is still using his unique set of skills as a passable action hero even if it takes 15 slash cuts to shoot him jumping a chain link fence. Now I don't for a second fashion myself an aging Hollywood star, but it is to say different rules apply for men aging in our cultural consciousness. You could make a compelling argument that US citizens currently live under a male gerontocracy.

I have yet to spend a small fortune on facial creams and age defying unguents. I will never experience menopausal dry vagina. I don't yet have osteoarthritis. That shouldn't preclude my enjoyment of this collection of musings but it all felt a little too Borscht Belt, “take my wife, please” brand of humor. The broad swipes just didn't connect for me. But then again it could simply be as an aging male I tend to crotchety and cynical grumbling as I mumble into my porridge complaining that I'm not like those other seniors.

Fifty. You can say all you want how fifty is the new forty, but the truth is there: fifty. Fifty brings with it all the things that fifty has always brought, and, in addition, all the current and hopeless cures that go with it. You can Botox it all you want, but old friends are still going to get cancer and die. You can yoga it all you want, but directors just aren't going to choose you for that new picture.


That's what Gurwitch takes on, albeit in a much lighter vein than I am. And the lightness helps, somehow, doesn't it?


So try this book, if fifty is looming ahead of you just down the road. It is, you know. And you may as well face it with strength and a laugh.