Yeah, but you’re a woman. I was addressing a man. Men his age haven’t purchased new outerclothing in decades. Shopping? That’s a young man’s game. They’re happy to wear the same t shirt they’ve been wearing for 30 years. It only has a few holes. That rip on the left side is part of the charm.
Studies that I just made up suggest that half of the clothes women throw away are their husband’s, and of those, 76.2% are done secretly while another 15% are done in the open, but against his will.
My friend and I were walking in the park when a man about 50 greeted us as “young ladies.” We’re both in our sixties.
I took his words as a compliment, meaning we look youthful. :smack: My friend thought he was insulting us
for being old. I should’ve asked him how he meant it.
I was happy when I was “carded” in my 30’s but that was decades ago. Now when young ladies flirt with me, I know it’s because I appear totally harmless.
I wonder if those calling middle-aged people “young” are just following a script: in their training the label becomes a politeness with little meaning. In the non-English country where I live, a pronoun implying “old” is sometimes used with younger people just for politeness!
The discounts isn’t true either. Discounts rarely start before 60, and sometimes not before 65. 56 isn’t even at the beginning of discounts, let alone in the middle of it.
I thought that post had to be a joke at first; but Chessic Sense seems to be doubling down on it – or maybe not, since their second post on the subject refers to “studies that I just made up.”
– Newtosite, the question isn’t just whether the man thought he was giving a compliment or not. It’s that, in order for it to be a compliment, it presumably would have to be the opposite of a compliment to acknowledge that you’re not young: in other words, using “young” as a compliment implies that there’s something wrong with being old.
I sympathize with service workers who are ordered to address older people as “young man” or “young lady” because their bosses think it sounds friendly, but it’s still overly familiar and discourteous. A startled look and a puzzled “I beg your pardon?” usually fixes it, as long as you’re clearly middle-aged or older.
My husband is 63. I can’t begin to list how many new garments he’s bought himself in the last year or two. And heaven help me if I try to toss any of his clothes - I consider it a victory if I can get him to get rid of clothes that no longer fit.
And considering I’m retired and probably in the last quarter of my life, yeah, I qualify as old, at least chronologically. Plus I get all kinds of senior discounts, on the rare occasions when I remember to ask. But I don’t sit around moaning about aches and pains, and I still mow my own lawn and hang my laundry out to dry. And my usual attire is jeans and sneaks, not shiny polyester housedresses. In a lot of ways, being old is a state of mind.
