A woman’s prime ends after 30? No way.

As featured online @ Daily Telegraph on 21 July 2016

“Older chicks are hot,” I said to a friend. She snarled at me for being so vulgar and then went back to reading her magazine. I took it from her.

She didn’t snarl this time but cursed at my rudeness. The last of the insults I didn’t hear as I read the headline: A woman’s prime ends after 30.

I threw it back at her this time doing the cursing. “That’s crap from a crappy magazine sold by a crappy newsagent,” I said, being incredibly unfair on the newsagency she bought it from.

“Crap but true,” she replied, “When it’s in a magazine it’s always true.”

How could I argue with this female friend of mine. The adjacent page had an ad that showed a woman heading into a gym with a designer handbag.

“I’ve just turned 31, which means my prime just ended,” she said.

“Sucks for you,” I replied. She continued reading and I continued watching her read. I did it in a creepy way, then a thoughtful way (think art gallery face), then a sympathetic way.

Only the sympathy wasn’t forced. The evolving look on her face said this issue cut a little deeper than I first thought. She really did she think she was past her prime. It was time to set the record straight. Magazines didn’t tell the truth. Matthew did (that’s me).

“I’d be more upset that it’s taking so long. You know, to actually get to your prime. I’d be wanting to hurry up and get to 31. Hell, you’re not even there then, I’d say 35 at least.”

She looked down at my mug wondering if someone had spiked my coffee. They couldn’t have, there was no coffee in it. Just water.

“Really?” she asked, “You don’t think women hit their prime until 35?”

“Think? I know they don’t.”

“Well then give me one example,” she asked.

One example? I could give her three. And I probably could have kept going beyond that.

When I was 19, I worked on a kid’s game show, I told her. It was a two-week shoot for Channel Ten and the host had me mesmerised. She was so smart and so well spoken. Of course was, she was a newsreader. She was also brilliant with the kids. I just wanted to hang out with her all the time. But couldn’t. I was mainly hoping some of it might rub off.

She put down her magazine somewhat confused, “When we talk ‘prime’, we’re talking about looks right?”

“Hell no, what do they matter?”

She waited for an answer not realising it was a rhetorical question.

“Magazines are the only things that care about looks.”

I carried on with example two. By 25 I’d progressed to a show named Packed to the Rafters on Channel 7. I was on the script team. We had an episode read-thru every second Tuesday. There was this blonde woman who played one of the characters. I loved her, Jon English and Steve Jacobs from a show years earlier and was stoked to be sitting five feet from her. The read-thrus were a barrel of laughs, but I once got in trouble for laughing not knowing the line she read was a serious one. I couldn’t help it. She was the funniest woman ever. She called me “the new kid”. Even after the 50th time she said it; even after I wasn’t new anymore, I still found it hilarious.

“I’m pretty sure I know who you’re talking about,” my friend said to me. “She is pretty funny.”

She was starting to come around and understand that 30 wasn’t the finish line for a woman’s “primeness”. Still, the magazine sat there between us. And thus I continued on with example three.

Rounding out the commercial networks, I was lucky enough to be invited into Channel Nine’s Melbourne news bureau late last year. Everyone on the team couldn’t have been more welcoming. Down on set, I was introduced to the weather girl. She screamed “cool factor” like you wouldn’t believe. Charisma if you will. They say talking about the weather is boring but hearing how much rainfall Gippsland was going to receive that following day was like hearing Mozart for the first time.

“So they’re all famous,” my friend said. I didn’t quite get out the last word. “No wonder they came across as being in their prime.”

I was getting sick of the word “prime”. She had made a good point, but it was one that I could counter. The three women I’d crossed paths with, albeit briefly, wouldn’t be any different if they weren’t famous. If anything, I’d seen them in their work environment, not on a red carpet, or a promo tour or, god forbid, a photo shoot for a magazine cover.

And I certainly didn’t see them as famous, but as colleagues, or friends, or role models.

It seemed in her eyes that the truth still seeped from the pages of that flipping magazine. And nothing I could do or say would change that.

“I’m not sure why I just gave you those three examples. I didn’t need to,” I said, admittedly becoming a tiny bit frustrated. “There is no one way nor the other. There is just my opinion and yours. It was an attempt to make you feel better, when in truth I don’t believe there is such a thing as a ‘woman’s prime.’

At any age.

“I just know you don’t get worse or inferior or less valuable as a woman, as a person, with age.”

The things you learn about yourself. I never knew I cared nor had a viewpoint on issues such as this. But clearly I did as what was said, was meant. It also seemed to do the trick as she picked up the magazine and put it in the bin.

However the next conversation surrounded another insecurity. “Do you think I shop too much?” she asked. Of course I didn’t.

“Good,” she continued. “I want to go shopping right now. I need a new handbag to take to the gym.”