41 Is The New 40

Breaking up with milestone birthdays.

*This week’s About Time newsletter is written by Jessica Pallay. Check in next week for writing by Kaity Velez. 

Who celebrated a milestone birthday while in quarantine? I feel you. 

During our year-and-a-half of hiding away, celebrating milestone birthdays with woeful (but touching! thank you friends!) collections of 15-second tribute videos from those who remembered to send greetings on time became the norm. You were lucky if your partner/kids/mother sent you a card (the post office was scary!) and you settled for a group candle-blowing over zoom with a few dear attendees audio-only.

Thankfully, there’s a new, post-quarantine trend: celebrating the fuck out of your 41st, or 46th, or even 53rd-and-a-half birthdays. Once throwaway ages (how old am I again?), these random birthdays -- and half birthdays -- have taken on new meaning post-covid. We’re talking rooftop raves, weekends in St. Barts and 10-course plant-based dinners at 11 Madison Park. People are doing it up, and rightfully so!

Sure, it might just be pent up energy that was accumulating during that dark, scary time when we weren’t sure we’d ever be able to celebrate IRL again. But I’m hoping these rando birthday celebrations are here to stay, and that they push us to reconsider the concept of “milestone birthdays” and our attachment to turning certain ages.

I admit that turning 40 felt sort of emotional to me, at least at first. It was pre-covid and I certainly contemplated throwing an epic bash in Mexico City and guilting any and all of my friends into celebrating me. 

Ultimately, I opted for a glass (ok, bottle) of lunchtime champagne and a quiet facial, during which I napped and forgot where -- and how old -- I was, followed by dinner with my kids. No big woop.

Now I’m not saying I did 40 right; I’ve celebrated many a friend’s milestone birthdays in some pretty fab places and had an awesome time doing so. But why 40? What is it about that age (or 45? Or 50?) that feels so important? Why does it have to represent the culmination of our life’s work? And the culmination of our own self-worth?

I get that back in the day, when people didn’t live as long as they do now, turning 40 was considered a true achievement. And when I was a kid, well, 40 seemed positively elderly. But here we are in 2021, when life expectancy for women in the U.S. is 80+ years, and we’re out there killing it well into our 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. Obsessing about 40 is like being one of those moms that tells people your kid is “53 months.” At some point the math just stops making sense.  

The idea of a milestone birthday -- no matter what age -- is, at best, outdated, and at worst, harmful. Placing so much importance on a single day, drawing a sort of line in the sand of before and after, feels like an arbitrary and unfair way to pass judgement on yourself, no? And if you had to do cross that line during covid, by yourself, well then did it even happen? Have you actually accomplished anything? Fuuucck. That’s too much pressure for anyone.  

It’s funny to look back to my younger years and think about what I thought I wanted by 40: money, influence, a full set of Fornasetti dishes. But 40 came and went, and I realized I didn’t have those things, and that was OK, because I didn’t actually want them anymore. Except for maybe the Fornasetti dishes.

The best things about my life these days aren’t really the things you can “achieve.” My accomplishments aren’t checkboxes, they’re all so much more fluid. Sometimes there’s big wins, many times there’s small ones and other times there are losses. It’s an ebb and flow with each new day.  To pick a random “milestone” and take stock, well, everything could be different tomorrow. 

Forget 40. Or 45. Or 60. Let’s celebrate NOW. Throw a party just because, and take that trip you’ve been postponing (and ask your closest 20 friends to join you). Don’t get me wrong, there’s no judgement here. I’ll still party age-inappropriately with you at your 50th birthday party in Tulum. But I’ll come to your 51st and your 52nd too. 

Did your latest “milestone” birthday meet your expectations? Are you where you thought you would be? Tell us in the comments below! 

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