Let’s All Start Lying About Our Ages Like Margot Robbie
Margot Robbie is in the news today for claiming to be 25 when she is probs to def 30, according to an old article from 2008. And I, for one, salute her. Adults should not have to define themselves by their birth year.
Instead, we should all just start either pretending we don’t have an age like Prince did, or round to whatever age we feel like. Because a lot of the time, what people think about your age impacts you more than your actual age does.
What’s the difference between ages 25 and 30 really? It’s pretty negligible — unless you work in Hollywood. Then, the jobs you’re offered can completely change in those five short years.
Take Margot and Olivia Wilde for example. Olivia is said to be 32 years old. And at age 30 in 2013, she was reportedly told she was too old to be cast in The Wolf of Wall Street. The part she’d tried out for later went to Margot Robbie, who was 23 at the time.
But here’s the thing: Margot Robbie was probably closer to 27 or 28, if reports about her true age are correct. That means she was almost the same age as Olivia Wilde, but her fake age could have changed casting agents’ perception of her and helped her clinch the part.
Basically, you can’t control people’s perception of your age. But you can control what people think your age is. Society is fucked, so why not just lie and pick the age you want?
Continuing to use Margot Robbie as an example, the star is on the cover of Vogue‘s June issue, being trumpeted as “Hollywood’s Hottest New Star.” They definitely wouldn’t call her that if she was known as a 30-year-old. Calling her a “new” star is a function of her supposed age. If Vogue wasn’t defining her in this way, they’d come up with a way cooler way to describe Margot, a badass and talented actress who’s way more than just a “hot new star.”
Defining women by their age is boring and reductive. (Maybe not as boring and reductive as the intro paragraph of Margot’s Vogue profile, but a close second.) So I say we all rebel in one of two ways:
1. Refusing to disclose our ages to anyone who asks, from potential boyfriends to Vogue profilers. Like your plastic surgery history and natural hair color, your age is no one’s business. “How old are you?” “Don’t worry about it!”
2. Treating ages like regional accents. I wouldn’t say I have a Bay Head, New Jersey, accent — I have a northeastern accent. So I’m not going to say what year my age is — I’ll say I’m in my 20s or just default to the age that I currently feel.
Because let’s face it, once you’re past 18, age is nothing but a number. And old ladies who lie about their age have always been kind of amazing.
