ah, to be young

I sincerely hope your husband signed off on that essay, girl

When I graduated college, I made myself a website. I envisioned it as a place to blog and make a little home online for myself as a writer; as I knew nothing about pitching or how to gain a readership and establish myself. I called it ah, to be young, as in ahtobeyoung.com. Even though I was indisputably young at the time, I hoped people would understand that I meant a tongue in cheek version of the phrase: young as in ageless, young as in irreverent, young as in not taking oneself too seriously even as one ages.

It was a running joke from college; one of my friends had been making out on the grass outside of our school’s art building with her new boyfriend when the public safety team came patrolling by on their scooters. Instead of reprimanding them, my friend overheard one p-safe officer say to the other: “Ah, to be young.” As we were wont to do with any funny antic, we made it our thing, repeating it at any semi-relevant moment. After college, with my friends spread all over the country, I made our things become my things as a way to keep a community alive that I felt dead without. 

I still have that same Squarespace subscription from eleven years ago, though now the website is a portfolio for my writing rather than a blog. Even though I’ve purchased various Becca and/or Schuh adjacent domains over the years, which I can manage to redirect to said website, the landing page still stubbornly reads ahtobeyoung.com. Once again, I’m counting on strangers seeing it as ironic, irreverent, or at the very least, nonsensical. I wouldn’t want the entire internet thinking I’m pathologically obsessed with youth! 

Some people don’t mind others thinking they’re obsessed with youth; in fact, some people actually broadcast the fact of their obsession to the entire internet, packaged as precociousness and a bizarre prepper-esque mentality. I’m referencing, of course, the essay published in The Cut yesterday (bravo, btw, wall-to-wall bangers this year) where 27-year-old Harvard graduate, stay-at-home-girlfriend (wife) and founder of an effete ‘new magazine about serious writing’ (her words!) Grazie Sophia Christie writes about…being better than everyone else because she married a rich guy? How traumatic it was to date a 30-year-old at 20? (Because people were mean :( ) It seems to have been pitched (and thus marketed) as an age-gap piece, but that’s not really what it is. At the end of the day it is a piece about a young woman who is desperately afraid of getting older, hellbent on convincing herself (and the rest of us?) that she has circumvented the tragedy of being a modern woman by living as an early 20th century socialite, and, honestly, the perils of literary ambitions. 

I was quite nervous to read this essay. I assumed it would make me upset. I’m having a fragile few weeks! Must I have my existence called into question by a creepy baby? 

But I called to mind an Anne Lamott quote that I read during my aforementioned period of directioneless despondency, and soldiered on. I read a lot of Anne Lamott at the time. Sue me, I don’t care. I found the quote online, in an excerpt of one of the books I read published on Salon. In the essay, she’s on vacation with her friends and young son, working to feel positive about her aging body in an ill-fitting swimsuit. She has a moment of insecurity when four teen girls arrive to take the resort shuttle with her. But then, she writes,

“I just imagined whispering, softly, "Tick, tock ... tick, tock."

If the entire premise of your essay can be refuted by an Anne Lamott quote…girl that’s bad. I can guarantee you’re about to have a bad day on the internet. I could actually just end this here! But instead, I will do a close read, because I’m insane, and that is more fun. 

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The essay begins with a somewhat nonsensical attempt at metaphor, about the author and her husband “badly playing” the lottery in the south of France. Does one play the lottery? Badly or well? They don’t even scratch off the numbers, because they are the kind of people who can afford lottery tickets as an in-joke. Nevermind the relationship of the lottery to poverty, there are simply so many other things one can stupidly spend money on? It’s not hard to imagine that the entire point of her and her husband “badly” “playing” the “lottery” is that she has envisioned this anecdote as the limpid metaphor it becomes – that she has already won the lottery. 

She goes on: for her it was not a game of chance, because she planned it all out. Alexa, play Mastermind by Taylor Swift. She chose her husband “on purpose, not by chance,” as opposed to all the women out there who choose their husbands…not on purpose? What would choosing a husband by chance even mean? Is she referring to the swaths of women who picked their husbands from a husband lottery? If so, how does one sign up for the husband lottery? Is it also located in the south of France? 

The author then goes back to describe her time as an undergrad at Harvard College. (As distinguished from the greater Harvard University, because Harvard has many different schools. You’d only know this if you went to Harvard. Or, if you’ve lived in New York for any number of months or if you’ve ever read a book by someone who went to Harvard.)

Instead of doing the things that most undergrads, even at Harvard, do, i.e., drinking, hanging out, dicking around, having spirited discussions about new-to-them theorists over a joint or trying to befriend professors, she spends her time at Harvard worrying about her fleeting youth. Because, she erroneously posits as fact, her youth is worth more in potential futures than anything she could learn or create at school. 

I was an idiot overly besotted with my own lucky circumstances when I was in college, and I still never thought that I’d only be useful as a baby. I thought I might have the most fun in college (not true!,) or that I might never be so surrounded by friends, (also not true!,) but it simply never crossed my mind that I might be at the peak of my potential. 

My only guess at how someone comes to such a warped worldview is if that’s the way they’re raised, which is a terrifying thing indeed. The people who were the most instrumental in my upbringing, my parents and later my college professors, simply never treated me as someone whose clock would run out at age 25. Given the author’s parentage (internet sleuths have deduced that they are some conservative donor types,) it’s not surprising, but it is depressing! 

She then goes on a short but illuminating thought venture: she could spend years crafting an existence, or she could marry it. I say illuminating not to denote potential use, but in the sense that it clarifies another of her illogical presumptions: that an existence you marry is yours to begin with. It’s not! It’s the person you married’s existence! You are a passenger. Hope that helps! 

Much has been commented on her reading Lolita in the Harvard Business School Library. She acts like this child’s play was some sort of Pentagon-level logistics, and then expresses dismay that none of her friends wished to participate. I’m reminded of when at age 16, working at Panera Bread, I would see UW Madison students en route to parties on the University's infamous party weekends (Halloween, Mifflin Street block party, etc) and realized how easy it would be to just walk in to any busy house and pretend to belong. I told this to my one or two existent friends (I was not cool) and they were like wow, great idea! And I was like, okay, let’s do it tonight! And they were like……lol no we aren’t doing that. Luckily it only took me a few months to understand, instead of, uh, a number of years into adulthood.

If you’re of the state of mind that life is a china cabinet to step into and sit, looking at your counterparts, forevermore, than yes, I can see how Mrs. Christie’s life choices make an instructional sort of sense. But…she’s a writer, and by the looks of it, she’s one who’s desperate to have a story to tell and have it be regarded well. The truth is, you don't get a life story by stepping into one. Sure, you get a life, but it’s someone else’s. Your origin story is as thin as…well, this essay that describes it.  

Much has also been made of her describing her own pert ponytail and pointy breasts. (I know those weren’t the adjectives, but they may as well have been.) Once again, I am laughing! 

My breasts have been a 34G since college, if not before. Clearly, I’ve never known “high” breasts. But…nobody has complained about that. In fact, as one might presume, men are categorically obsessed with my breasts. Nobody cares if they’re not “HIGH” if they’re GIANT! (Or have nice nipples or are soft or are …. You get what I mean. People like boobs. It’s not a big deal.) 

This is not to brag (maybe a little) but to say: men find many things attractive. Worrying that your breasts are never going to be as “high” as they are at 20 is not what a 20 year old should be worrying about. Has she ever tried having fun? This girl seems to have designed her life in order to escape a set of largely imaginary problems?

The way she talks about having most of her eggs at 20 makes me wonder if this woman is severely mentally ill. Literally. Worrying about that in your 30’s is one thing, but worrying about it at 20 is like, something is maybe wrong in your brain? Maybe she should have just gone on antidepressants? It’s like me worrying I had breast cancer when I was 9. It’s not a symptom of maybe having breast cancer (or of nearing infertility,) it’s a symptom of being unable to correctly regulate your thoughts.

So, she marries the man. Does she think that marrying at 23 froze her in amber? Did she consider that a man who likes young women may very well continue to like young women? And that she is not frozen in amber, she will not always be in her twenties, but there will always be available women in their twenties? 

But I’m sure he’s different :) 

I like how her proof of her unimpeachable wheeling and dealing to get this man is…sneaking into a party. Ma’am. Everyone has snuck into a party. That you happened to meet this guy there is actually precisely the thing you seem to be afraid of, based on that lottery bit: chance. Or, that her evidence of playing her cards right during their courtship is that she…sent his mom a thank you note. THAT IS LITERALLY NORMAL BEHAVIOR. You didn’t enact a timeless lovespell by sending a thank you note! 

Then there’s a whole paragraph about the challenges of their age gap, presumably input to tie it to the pitched theme. It misfires because it reads like her trying to justify a thin period of “trauma” as the raison d'être behind this breathless retelling.

“Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon.”

OMG, you overheard women talking about you in the bathroom? Let’s call the fucking cops! 

She goes on to make a lot of assumptions about the inner lives of other people’s relationships, an interesting tactic for someone so deeply offended at assumptions about her own relationship that she felt the need to write this essay about it. She claims that her friends in “same age, same stage” partnerships are maybe making a riskier! choice than an age gap!

One day, perhaps soon, this woman will recognize the error of doing children’s arithmetic means testing on various relationships. Something bad will happen to her, in her relationship or otherwise, something only governed by chance and fortune. And she will see that risk assessment is for insurance agents and fraternity consultants. Because we’re all at risk, every day, in love or alone. Intelligent versions of minimizing your risk are actually very basic: wearing a seatbelt, getting regular checkups, putting six months of rent in a savings account.  She acts like marrying a rich French 30-year-old was a Black Ops tactic, when in fact it’s more akin to the stock market or the poker table. 

Mrs. Christie then shits on her own brother for … not putting towels in the hamper? And claims that him and his girlfriend ‘statistically will not end up together.’ Interesting to be so sure of a statistic about average heterosexual couples but seemingly to have not investigated statistics, not to mention individual stories, about women whose husbands leave their younger wives for an even younger woman when the clock strikes midnight. 

People have said that this article isn’t about age gaps, it’s about marrying rich, and I agree. But I would posit that it’s about something else even more. It’s about a person who wants really really desperately to be taken seriously as a writer. 

She describes the AR girlfriend lifestyle she provides her husband with, and what she has gotten in exchange: “I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.”

If anything, I hope this article shows some young person who is actually out there working really really hard at shitty jobs to afford their creative endeavors that the meal ticket / angel investor / spousal sponsor life they might secretly fantasize about isn’t a recipe for talent. Delicious circles? Girl, you’re stuck writing stories for less than minimum wage because you’ve never had to pay rent. I told someone recently that shitty work gets less shitty when you break $50 an hour. Does it suck to get there? Yes, but those hours aren’t wasted. I don’t enjoy (in the sense of pleasure) singing for my supper, whether it’s waiting tables or writing copy, but I value it in the sense that every one of those hours was spent getting better at something, becoming more shrewd and less idealistic and more grounded, in a way that pays the dividends this girl imagined that being 23 forever would pay, if such a thing were possible.

She then talks about how she was excited to find a formed and finished husband. I can see the allure of that in theory, but at what cost? In her case, the cost is obvious: he was formed, but you were not. How fun! You don’t know who you are! She admits as much: 

“I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

If this sounds appealing to anyone out there, I guess, to each their own, but to me it sounds like a chapter in a psychological thriller. A woman so subsumed by a man’s image of her that she has ceased to exist outside of it. 

Having a boyfriend-cum-assistant to help you do your chores and get your first job and design your life might sound nice when contemplating one’s allergy to hard work (we’ve all been there,) but the point she misses is what happens when you’re on the other side of that initial work. I didn’t like working at IHOP, if you can believe it. For the most part I didn’t like waiting tables in general and I didn’t like not having friends for the first few years after college and I still don’t like worrying about money. 

But I don't regret any of the time I spent not enjoying those things. The tone of this essay is that anyone who has spent time doing unpleasant work in the service of a greater future looks back on that time with disgust. I don’t think people do. I haven’t spent a moment of my thirties feeling gross about anything unpleasant I did in my twenties, with the exception of time spent with a few unsavory men. But work, shitty apartments, odd jobs, loneliness? I’m just proud, I’m just grateful. Some of it makes me nostalgic, some of it makes me laugh. I picked the lessons from each thing and moved on. Having lived through challenges isn’t a tragedy of wasted time. The time spends itself anyway. 

There are paragraphs in the essay where the author becomes momentarily self aware of the risks of her position, but even in those moments, she doesn’t show a shred of self knowledge that she may have actually made sacrifices. By which I mean, she acknowledges potential shortcomings of this crafted existence, but she doesn’t give any pagespace to the idea that other people’s lives, ones devoid of rich husbands, might also be worth living. 

Again, there are moments where a perspicaciousness about her reality almost emerge, but they don’t come fully formed. “Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s.” 

But what life are you living? Whose life?? Oh, you’re so close! So close to getting it! 

I don’t know which is worse; if the sense of superiority is to cover a deep well of insecurity, or if it isn’t. The smugness could be hiding something, or, (probably worse!), it could be hiding nothing at all. She could have no idea what you miss out on by refusing to live a life that solely belongs to you. 

Even accounting for my initial fear of reading this essay for the unseemly feelings it might arouse in me, I actually have found the experience of thinking about it very enjoyable (thanks in no small part to the ever-arch Cut comment section, this one’s for you.) I see in this writer’s tics, her flowery language and pseudo-elegance, something of someone who I once was. I’ve let myself dip back into it while writing this newsletter, for old times sake. I too thought that this tryhard language was the key to something. I didn’t have as many hours as I wanted to dedicate to finding said keyhole and opening the door to a promised land. I resented that I had to spend those hours elsewhere.

Now? Thank god for those hours. They were a different kind of key, to something other than a door.

Growing up felt so good.

That’s what I want to say to not just this chick, but any young woman worried about the future. Shadaroba, the future is much better than the past. The freedom that every year of age brings is worth so much more than whatever pertness or imagined relevancy is lost. Sure, some men want to hang out with young women. Let them. Why would you, as an adult woman, want to spend time with a man who prefers the company of what amounts to teenagers?

It feels, again, borderline clinically insane to live in a worldview where you really believe that every woman out there who isn’t married to a rich, negligibly older man, is slumming it and being tragic. Bro…we’re fine? I’m writing this while playing The Sims on a Thursday afternoon? The women she’s shoveling pity on are, for the most part, chilling. Sure, we have our challenges, whether they be “same stage” boyfriends who can’t pack suitcases or demeaning jobs or not having enough money, but they’re all just moments in the process. The process of being alive is actually cool and fun.

I can see very clearly how Christie thinks she has replaced life experience with the experience of looking at nice things all the time and having a lot (too much?) time to read. It’s because someone who’s just looking at fancy stuff all the time is empty, even if they spend their spare time reading books. We all love books. We get it! But books aren’t all there is. 

It also seems like she’s implying something here about how you only have time and mental space to write if you’re a rich man’s wife. Which is just obviously not true? Sure, we’ve had the discussion a billion times about how a more affluent spouse can help keep a writer afloat, but that’s just obviously not the only scenario? There’s a reason working writer is a phrase, and it’s because most writers have to work for their money! 

We all come at periods of despondency differently based on our circumstances. If I’d felt I had the choice, I wouldn’t necessarily have picked poking my way through this endless world via waiting tables, literature, and little else as a guidebook, but now that I’m ten years further along that path than I was, I see so clearly the advantages of DIYing it instead of finding an older person whose wing to crawl under. I don’t have money or live in France, but everything I have is mine. I’m not saying what is mine is superior to what others have, but that my ownership of it makes it inherently valuable because it cannot be ascribed to anyone else. 

I bought the domain ahtobeyoung.com eleven years ago. I still feel young in most ways and only older in ways that pay extreme dividends. I’m old enough to have found the perfect chemistry of antidepressants, old enough to care for an Actually Old dog (12, who nevertheless acts 5 and is commonly mistaken for a puppy,) old enough to know when my attempts at eloquence have tipped over into grandiloquence. Old enough to be a true friend and a champion of other writers and to have jealousy only ever be a silly little man in the back of my head instead of a monster taking over my psyche.

My skin looks light years better than it did at 22. My meltdowns are rare and my work ethic is high. (Breasts are, as I mentioned, not high, but as ample as ever.) At 33, I wouldn’t call myself young or old. I call myself a person, a New Yorker, a dog owner, a friend, a woman.

(Honestly, this essay was a goldmine, there was so much to discuss that I didn’t even get to because of length and because the comment section did it better. I’ll leave you with this:)