Age Is Just A Number — Not From Where I Come From
The age stigma is something which I was never able to avoid in my lifetime. Whether it was among the people you knew with or with others outside your circle. And to be precise, this happens the moment you either graduate from college or land in a job and this is somewhere around your mid-20s.
All of a sudden, it dawns upon people that your biological clock has started ticking and very much especially if you are a woman. And to note — my views are purely centred around the community that I grew up with.
So what happens the moment you turn mid-20s — for many, it’s basically the age of a fully fledged self-declared adult — but for me it was screaming freedom. Having to move away from home to a new city, with no curfews and all the time in your hands — it was almost like a dream come true. You just started a new job, you actually had someone paying you a salary and if you are lucky, you have a new groupie that you hang out with almost every other day and have awesome adventures over the weekend.
Your new found freedom is something that you are not willing to give up anytime soon — well in fact, you wished that every other day spent carefree. Not saying that work wasn’t taxing, but you are at the age where you’re not entirely so ambitious about getting into the ranks or being in the c-management class of the company.
All goes well and every other visit back home then becomes this constant nag about settling down, finding a partner and eventually being married. And over time, you end up running out of excuses that you can cook up — because the truth being told — you don’t want that commitment, well at least not yet.
For many young women these days, that also means that its time they want to spend either pursuing their studies, or expanding their career growth or simply wanting to have that travel checklist ticked off. The moment this happens, the age catches up and when you hit your late 20s, you are then labeled as being too headstrong, forced to fight a constant uphill battle against societal prejudices because you are not settled yet and others in your same circle are already having babies and planning for school admissions.
This is the point in time that many succumb to these societal pressures and end up accepting ‘fate’ — as you may call it and end their singlehood. While I’m not condemning those who do this for absolute valid reasons, I’ve always questioned on whether its done by true choice or simply being afraid of continuously being stigmatised. And I’m in no doubt and sure that in most cases, the latter is the reason. I have seen people whom I know are happily settled and then you have people who are just trying to hold on to their relationships. Well, for whatever reasons or justification that one may have — for me it was just something which I was not prepared to commit my time and energy into.
So you then reach a point in time when you realise that your groupie is no longer around to spend time with you, because they are busy planing family holidays instead or trying to save up future funds for their kids. While you think that this may not bother you and you start going on your solo trips, you come to a stage when you find yourself being financially and emotionally stable and feel that the time is now right to get onto that next stage in life.
But the problem is that — according to the ‘community, you are no longer in that category of women who are within that conformed age to find a partner.
So this whole ‘finding a partner’ ordeal backlashes both ways — if you are either being introduced to someone or even if you are finding someone on your own. Because the first stage of acceptance is centred around age. And to be honest, it’s something that happens even in the most modernised family structure when everyone is forward thinking when it comes to equality etc.
While the reason behind this thought is about the fertility time bomb of a woman and narratively it being ticking like a bomb — it then appears that all other factors about the person, being her value as an individual, or her achievements or even her ambitions is absolutely disregarded.
So there are 2 view points to this —
1: The very reason to assume that a women’s value goes on a downward trend between her eligibility as a companion vs her ability to have children — goes beyond logical reasoning.
And 2: Complete disregard to women who feel that they want to enter into a committed relationship once she feels ready to do so — financially and emotionally.
And because you don’t fall into this categories of acceptance, you are then thrown into the deepest pitfall of the community and further stereotyped for having issues.
For me, the stereotyping had never bothered me because at the end of the day — you really can’t satisfy others over what you truly want in life.
But for some women, these stigma creates a deep scar and often resulting in low self confidence and feeling unworthy of themselves. Sadly this still exists within the community and although you find many women having more choices on how they want to lead their life or be in a relationship, the stigma still holds as an effect within the larger circle of the families and especially when others tend to use this as a conversation starter to degrade a family and their inability to have their daughters married off because of the age factor.
My advise to those women — the moment you become a victim to people’s thoughts, you are only supporting the continuous action of being stereotyped and you will not see an end to this vicious cycle of thought.
I’m still waiting for the day when age is only viewed as a number for the right reasons, at least from where I come from.
