Stop Whispering Your Age

CINCUENTA Y CUATRO. Normalicemos decir nuestra edad.

In a few days, I will turn 54. CINCUENTA Y CUATRO. I had to write it in caps in my mother tongue and say it out loud to see if the number itself carries any weight with me. It really doesn’t. It’s just a number that represents all the years that I’ve been blessed to be on this Earth.

I’ve always been very upfront about my age. Más bien, I’ve always been proud of my age. And not because I look younger than I am (no lo digo por creíada because being petite and looking younger has also meant not being taken seriously in my 20s and 30s), but because I carry all those years of lived experience into every interaction I have and every room I walk into. Hiding or lying about my age would be a dishonor to my own self and all she’s had to be present for in her life.

Por eso, it’s hard for me to understand why women hide their age. I respect it, pero me cuesta entenderlo.

That said, I’ve deeply admired a woman who did exactly that.

Are you old enough to remember Catalina Creel, quite possibly the most famous villain of a Mexican telenovela? My daughter’s paternal Mexican great-grandmother looked just like her, but with the sweetest smile and joyful demeanor. Not a villain at all.

When I met her in Mexico City in the early 2000s, she still carried the same Catalina Creel black hair bun, always impeccable but certainly not in style anymore. I always wondered if she learned to sleep sitting up to keep el peinado in place. She only wore dresses and always, always in high heels. I’m not even sure she wore chanclas at home. ¡Por lo menos no con la visita! The only time I saw her without her heels and dress was if I was ever lucky enough to catch her right after her daily, no excuses, hour-long walk in Coyoacán. Most of my memories of her are of dancing in her living room, a fresh Cuba Libre in hand, or of her leaning in to ask me softly, “¿Otra cubita, mija?”

As I sipped yet another cubita I didn’t really need, I would look at her and wonder how old she was. My curiosity stemmed from awe and admiration. Yo quiero ser como ella cuando tenga su edad, I would think. I needed to see what it looked like to be a woman well into her senior years who kept herself fashionable, a la Catalina Creel, joyful in her dancing heels, enjoying her favorite drink while hosting the best family parties. I needed that reference.

I would never find out her age because it was well known that she never, ever revealed it. It was a common topic of conversation over the annual chiles en nogada dinner or a Nochebuena fest at her house, where she would just sit there con una sonrisa coqueta and laugh at all the jokes at the expense of the mystery of her age.

And the thing is, she didn’t just decide in midlife to stop sharing. She planned it all along. Somehow, all five of her children’s birth certificates list a different birth year for her. I know, how about all of her other official documents? It’s still a mystery, but somehow in Mexico of the 1900s, anything was possible.

We believe she was 95-ish when she passed away.

When I heard Gaby Natale say in our latest Her Wisdom Era podcast episode that we should not be ashamed to say our age, I immediately thought of bisabuela. Because Gaby didn’t just say it casually, she said it with her whole chest and her exact birthday attached.

“Perdón, yo no elegí nacer el 13 de mayo de 1978. ¿Por qué me voy a avergonzar de que hoy tenga 47 años si no hay ningún crimen?”

And I felt that. Whether you hide your age like my daughter’s bisabuela or whether you say it out loud like Gaby and I do, the question underneath is the same:

Do you believe that your years add to you or take away from you?

I know my answer. And I think bisabuela, con su Cuba Libre and her dancing heels at 95-ish, knew hers too. She wasn’t hiding because she was ashamed. She was living so fully that the number simply didn’t matter to her. Maybe that was her own version of freedom.

But for a lot of us, the hiding does come from shame. From a culture that told us to be calladitas y bonitas and that our value has an expiration date tied to our youth. Gaby named that too, and she didn’t let us off the hook.

“Primero, normalizar decir nuestra edad. Y si nosotras no abrimos la boca, vamos a perpetuar que sigamos sufriendo solas.”

So here I am, turning 54 in a few days, saying it out loud, writing it in caps, and inviting you to do the same.

Not because the number defines us, but because our years lived deserve to be claimed rather than hidden. And if bisabuela taught me anything, it’s that the woman who dances at 95 in heels with joy in her mischievous eyes already knows that.

Con amor,

Ana Flores