# How old is Cathy (comic) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 23, 2001, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517 "2001-07-23T06:36:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2001, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/1 "2001-07-23T06:36:40Z")
When the strip appeared in the late 70s she seemed to be in her early 20s and she obviously has aged but now it seems she is around 38 to me. Is this right? ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2001, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/2 "2001-07-23T11:50:46Z")
In those irritating strips (well, I suppose no more irritating than any of the OTHER strips) where she is portrayed as a Creature of her Times in 1970 (hippie), 1980 (yuppie), 1990 (yuppie), 2000 (old yuppie), she must be in her late teens/early 20s in her first incarnation. That would make her around fifty-one. Guess that mother of hers had better put her plans for grandchildren on permanent hold. ---
**Author:** ![SkeptiJess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@SkeptiJess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkeptiJess)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2001, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/3 "2001-07-23T12:18:21Z")
I don’t know, **Ike** – I always read those irritating strips as Cathy standing in as a _representative_ of past times. Cathy as Everywoman, if you will. A damn depressing thought, really… Anyway, I think Cathy is supposed to be more or less the same age as her creator. Guisewite is apparently pretty close-mouthed about her age, but she’s gotta be mid-40ish, as the strip started when I was in high school and I am 40 years old. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2001, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/4 "2001-07-23T12:40:01Z")
Jess writes: \> Anyway, I think Cathy is supposed to be more or less the \> same age as her creator. Guisewite is apparently pretty \> close-mouthed about her age, but she’s gotta be mid- \> 40ish, as the strip started when I was in high school and \> I am 40 years old. Actually, it took me thirty seconds to find Cathy Guisewite’s age. (Look in the IMDb.) She was born September 5, 1950. It seems to me very ambiguous what age Cathy in the strip is supposed to be. On one hand, she seems to be about the same age as her creator - 50. _Cathy_ is not one of those strips where no one ages. It’s more like _Doonesbury_, where people come and go and things actually change occasionally. (Incidentally, the characters in _Doonesbury_ who are still there from the first years of the strip are the same age as me, since they started college in 1970 just like I did. Mike, Zonker, B.D., and Bernie are 49 (or maybe 48 depending when their birthdays are.) On the other hand, Cathy seems stuck in a time warp. She’s still single and nothing in her life seems to be that different than what it was in her late thirties. (But then, I seem to be stuck in a time warp. I’m still single and my life isn’t much different than it was when I was in my late thirties.) ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2001, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/5 "2001-07-23T17:00:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Wendell Wagner \* > \*\*(Look in the IMDb.) \*\* You’re terrifyin’ me here, **Wendell.** You don’t mean to say that someone is planning a full-length feature animated film based on CATHY…? ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2001, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/6 "2001-07-23T18:19:10Z")
Don’t worry about it, **Uke**. You’ll be able to ignore the entire film until the last scene, when you will be delivered a vaguely witty observation which all women understand intimately. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2001, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/7 "2001-07-23T18:19:44Z")
I concur with the comment made elsewhere on the board (not going to link it, I don’t want to slow things down by searching) that _Cathy_ is way too old and should FADE AWAY!!. Though I confess to chuckling occasionally over the “Memos” and “Forgettos” bit.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SkeptiJess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@SkeptiJess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkeptiJess)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2001, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/8 "2001-07-24T11:45:20Z")
How embarrassing, **Wendall** – I didn’t even really try to get her age. I just depended on my memory of interviews and articles in which Guisewite herself was coy about naming her age. I should have been more thorough. Anyway, although Cathy doesn’t age in “real time” as is the case with the characters in _For Better Or For Worse_ or _Gasoline Alley_, I don’t think it’s really accurate to say that she’s in a time warp, either. When the strip started, Cathy (and Guisewite) were 20ish and concerned with 20-something stuff – mother-daughter issues, boyfriends who couldn’t committ, beginning a career, etc. If you read the earlier collections, you can see that this stage lasted well into Guisewite’s 30s. Then, in the late '80s, Cathy jerked forward into her late 30s- early 40s and began obsessing about “middle-aged” stuff. It’s kind of hard to tell with Cathy herself, because the character is such a mess – when most of us move on into middle age, we _replace_ the things of youth. Cathy just scrunches her new obsessions onto her old. She’s still obsessing about her boyfriends and parents and weight, AND she’s now also obsessing about wrinkles and her biological clock and being downsized from her job. It’s somewhat easier to gauge Cathy’s age by that of her friends: Andrea had a couple of kids in the late '80s and is now doing the working-mother dance, Irving has taken up golf and worrying about his hairline… Basically, the _flavor_ of the strip is no longer youth (as it would be if Cathy was in a time warp), but early middle-age. Jess (who can’t believe that she just went on for 10 minutes about _Cathy_!! for crying out loud!) ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2001, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/9 "2001-07-24T12:42:50Z")
{ahem} Pardon me for pointing this out, but I just wanted to hear some applause for my INCREDIBLE GUESS in the second post in this thread. Okay, she won’t be fifty-one for another six weeks, but I’d say that was PRETTY DAMNED CLOSE. – Uke, off to the carnival to ask for a job at the Age-Guessing Booth ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2001, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/10 "2001-07-24T13:02:29Z")
Cathy (the character) can not be fifty. She is definitely concerned with the issues of approaching middle-age, but she (and her mother) still consider child-bearing a possibility. Also, her parents are older, but never seem “elderly.” I would put her at 40. In other words, I agree with **Jess/**. Cathy Guisewite’s life has become very un-Cathy-like. After all, she _did_ get married. 😉 Maybe she has separated her own life from her character’s over the years. In other words, maybe Cathy has gone from being a fictionalized representation of Cathy G. to a fully fictionalized character. (I certainly hope so. I’d hate to think that Cathy Guisewite was still searching for a magic bathng suit after all these years!) ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2001, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/11 "2001-07-25T00:51:23Z")
She also has a daughter, whom she adopted a few years before she got married. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2001, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/12 "2001-07-29T04:09:11Z")
Cathy’s reunion was in 1986 but we don’t know if it was her 20th or 10th reunion. The next age group up for her is the Grandpa Age group. And she did infact date a man her mother’s age. I question it as it seems she IS in her 40s but she lacks menopausal symptoms. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2001, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-is-cathy-comic/73517/13 "2001-07-29T12:13:23Z")
Green Bean writes: \> Cathy (the character) can not be fifty. She is definitely \> concerned with the issues of approaching middle-age, but \> she (and her mother) still consider child-bearing a \> possibility. That assumes that Cathy and her mother are sane, and we have no reason to think that. Cathy strikes me as the sort of woman who thinks she can have a child at 50. That is possible, you know. To name some celebrity examples, Adrienne Barbeau had twins at 51 and Beverly D’Angelo had them at 49. (Yes, they were using fertility drugs.) Diane Keaton adopted a child at 50 and Linda Ronstadt did the same in her late 40’s. Irving looked the same age as Cathy back in the '80’s. He now looks about 50. Cathy doesn’t look any older than she did back in the '80’s, but you have to remember that Guisewite is a terrible artist. She doesn’t know how to gradually age a character.