Real Age nazis

With an inkling that I should not go there, I just took the "Real Age" test created by Dr. Oz. Woah, was my ego severely deflated...I started with my calendar age--"33.3"--and found that my "real" age is "38.5." I'd better tell my boyfriend he's now dating a woman 10.2 years older than him. I'd better get a life insurance policy. I'd better floss more and find out my blah blah cholesterol levels, oh and probably not be so divorced (since it creates too much stress), according to advice given with the results.

Let me admit, I believed that this was one contest--the age contest--I could compete in (unlike most other ones). People constantly tell me I look young (maybe they're all lying, even the apparently shocked woman at the liquor store counter, and the cute 40-year-old who told me just the other day I could pass for 17 and that the lines on my face could only be seen "with a microscope"!!...I think she was flirting). I haven't eaten red meat, ANY, in 10 years. I eat veggies practically every day, sometimes in large amounts. I eat whole grains and fiber. My BMI is not in any danger zone...I'm sitting here in pre-pregnancy skinny pants as we speak. True, my loose, deflated post-baby belly is burping out over the waistband, but what can you do? (Situps?) I make an excruciating effort to eat desserts very rarely. I never have anything but skim milk. Etc. OK, I really belly-flop in the exercise department, but it will be a few years before this is obvious to everyone else and I have to run on a treadmill like a frantic gerbil just to keep looking the way I look now.

If you think about it, it is brilliant that our culture has done it again--come up with yet another way to make women feel ugly, inadequate, and unknowledgeable. Dr. Oz stresses that beauty is on the inside. So now I don't only have to worry about not looking like a slob on the OUTSIDE, I have to be gently reminded that I'm an ugly old hag on the INSIDE. And it's not bad enough that I'm actually 33.3 years old; I have to worry about how my body is invisibly collapsing in on itself, even all this time that I have stayed away from bad bad red meat, so that I will probably be 70 by the time I'm 40.

Of course, Dr. Oz makes valid points. Doing cardio is probably never a bad thing. Eating fruit is not the worst thing you could do, and flossing so that the dental hygienist doesn't have to spend an hour excavating down to where your sad rotting teeth actually are. I probably shouldn't drink the amount of wine I do every night (which I didn't even admit to on the test...and I was still scolded, in the results, for not practicing "moderation" in drinking). But I resent the idea that someone else out there knows exactly what I should be doing with my time and life (with all the flossing, fresh fruits, exercises of different types, etc., wouldn't that pretty much fill up your schedule?) and if I don't do it that way, I am made to feel like a bad and ignorant, not to mention ugly and old, person. I think this is a new strain of Puritanism. I think it is all harsh fluorescent lighting and a naked weigh-in in front of your classmates, with no nuance, depth, or sense of humor. So fine, I will begin my year of being 38.5, woefully ignorant about my pulse rate and cholesterol levels, neglectful of any kind of regular workout, and NOT (hell no) practicing moderation in drinking.