Sam Armytage: ‘I refuse to lie about my age’
Having just celebrated her 43rd birthday, Sunrise TV host Samantha Armytage believes it’s time to turn post-birthday blues on their thinning, wrinkled head.
Stellar
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It’s September. Spring has sprung and that means... it’s Virgo season.
Perhaps it’s because everyone I know (including me) has parents who drank too much at Christmas. But almost everyone I know was born around nine months later — and that time is now.
Enough yucky thoughts about baby-boomer parents getting their festive rocks off.
The important thing is, we’re currently in the midst of a birthday bonanza.
It’s a lucky thing really. Ask any Virgo, and they’ll tell you the planet couldn’t survive without the style, grace, organisational skills and, um, modesty of those born under this star sign.
And I had my own turn around the sun recently, which always brings a bit of quiet introspection. But the thing about the sun is, it gives you wrinkles.
So what’s a girl to do when she’s ageing and wrinkling but also getting pimples and, inside her head, thinking she’s still 18?
I was at lunch with a school mate a few weeks ago and I pointed across the restaurant to two fabulous older women and said, “That’ll be us one day,” and she replied, “That’s a mirror.”
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that you shouldn’t let the ageing process get you down... because it’s way too hard to get back up again.
And as my good friend and kick-ass cancer survivor Sally Obermeder noted a few years ago — after enduring eight months of chemotherapy — getting older is better than the alternative.
We’re only here once (unless you’re a Hindu) and then we’re a long time dead. Is it only natural that moving through one’s life will instil a degree of panic?
Why is youth so wasted on the young?
What’s a girl to do when she finds the FaceApp phenomenon completely unamusing?
And why are so many of us trying to Benjamin Button ourselves?
So many questions. So much anxiety. Which causes wrinkles. Gah!!!
Lucille Ball once said, “The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age.”
But I refuse to lie about my age (and I can’t even if I want to because the tabloids keep screaming it out every time they print pictures of me in the dog park — like my years on Earth somehow correlate to my ability to bag Banjo’s poo).
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So I’m owning my 43 years while furiously studying episodes of Grace And Frankie for Jane-Fonda-anti-ageing inspo.
But it’s time to turn these post-birthday blues on their thinning, wrinkling head. Ageing can be fun. You can start to say whatever you want.
You (usually) earn more money. You can still be immature enough to blame all your problems on your parents or society. You’re automatically given a seat on public transport.
And if you’re Brad Pitt, you become even hotter.
In TV, they start prefixing your name with “seasoned” or “experienced”, which I suppose is better than just saying “old”. And sometimes, the younger people in the office will ask you for life advice.
But I find the best bit about getting older is that in return for the crap advice, sometimes youthful colleagues will come over to your house and fix your internet and streaming services — for free.
And then you can put your rusty knees up and get back to the latest episode of Grace And Frankie.
Samantha co-hosts Sunrise, 5.30am weekdays, on the Seven Network.