Everyone Needs to Chill About Rebel Wilson's Age

Lying about your age is something that you don't understand until you start to do it.  And then you sort of hate people who don't let you get away with it.  I am reminded of my age (which is somewhere between 27 and none of your damn business) on a near daily basis.  I get it on dates when inevitably the age gap (whether minuscule or less so) between myself and another fella comes up.  I get it when I have to check boxes on legal forms and online surveys and I want to gouge my eyes out because I have to move up a new checkbox.  I get it constantly from younger coworkers who think calling me an old man is hilarious.  All of this drives me batty not just because it's annoying, but because I really hate that I notice it.  People don't necessarily mind getting older (as the old adage goes, it beats the alternative), but I think you get a combination of losing value from those around you (like it or not, we all judge on age at least on occasion and it's not "just a number") and the fact that you aren't measuring up to where you thought you'd be at X age.

This is partially why I don't give any of the figs about the fact that Rebel Wilson apparently lied about her age.  She's hardly the first actress to do so or allegedly do so (I still think that Beyonce did, though part of me has to let that one go as I would assume someone as well-known as she would have had that exposed by now).  There are legendary performers ranging from Doris Day to Zsa Zsa Gabor who subtracted a few years from their ages without anyone knowing.  Wilson's persona and most successful schtick has been that she's playing someone in her early-to-mid-twenties, and she can certainly pass for 29 or younger, so this doesn't seem to be an issue.

I'm also fine with this because Hollywood is weirdly disgusting about women and their ages.  Look at the recent report that Maggie Gyllenhaal was apparently "too old" to play a 55-year-old's love interest, despite the fact that she is 37 in real life (anyone else think that the movie she was talking about was Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight...because my totally-in-my-head theory is that that was the movie).  If women are losing out on parts that they are in theory too young for, why not lie about their age?  Jennifer Lawrence has made a career out of playing parts that were seemingly too old for her (she smartly skipped all aspects of being a college-age human being at the movies, though I still think that she was clearly too young for her excellent turn in American Hustle).  Wilson's plummest role so far has been as Fat Amy in the Pitch Perfect films, a role that demands her to be 22.  This is hardly something that anyone can hold against her.

And quite frankly, who cares if she created a new name and a new identity for herself?  Do we honestly believe everything that comes out of celebrity gossip interviews anyway?  I suspect that most celebrities have lied in interviews, creating a semi-truth about a "friendship" or past indiscretion to make for fascinating television.  These people are not politicians or journalists-they're actors and storytellers.  Their job is to pretend.

I say this about Wilson also because something really tragic happens to actresses' careers at around forty, in that they start to disappear.  Women such as Renee Zellweger and Meg Ryan get labeled "ugly" or are shamed for actually aging, and then suddenly they cannot be in movies anymore, leaving fans flummoxed and without anything new to celebrate.  And I am most definitely a fan of Wilson's-she's a creative and fascinating performer, perhaps limited as an actress but dynamite as a comedian and celebrity.  She's someone that I want to continue seeing on screen, and not someone I want narrow-minded producers to pigeonhole because suddenly she's forty and that means something different for actresses.

And I think it is time to start realizing that ageism, like so many prejudices, exists, and is something we all perpetuate.  It's not just something we carry on by saying we're 28 when we're really 31, but also something we do when we assume that someone isn't going to have children if they're 35 or that someone is to be handled with "pathetic gloves" when it turns out that they're not married and no longer in their twenties.  And if someone wants to lie about their age to try and dispel this prejudice and gain a leg-up on their careers or gain more parts, who are we to judge?