Mature?

In this article I’ll tell you why so many people use the word mature outdatedly when they relate it purely to age. And why its outdated usage is conventionalized so deeply that nobody questions it when surfing the net for a companion. So if you’re now curious and want to be more mature about being mature, …

Now too young

The conventional thinking in the past was that being a courtesan was a young girl’s game, similarly to modelling. But in fact courtesans start being interesting at 40 and the best ones are the oldest ones! They are the best because being mature comes with age and is a measure of adulthood, emotional control, wisdom, insight, and a certain gravitas. Now even models and women who aren’t courtesans but purport to be them occur at every age….

Hence if we connect being mature purely to age, considering that the life expectancy of people around the world is rising and people living to their mid 90s and even past 100 is now common, calling a woman mature at 40 years of her age is ridiculous. If we take the age of 95 as a frequently seen age today – and remember that women generally live longer than men, 40 is not even halfway through life. Of course, a woman at 40 could be mature or immature in all other senses of the word! Hence I started this paragraph with saying ‘if we connect being mature purely to age’.

So if webmasters of directories and independent women market themselves as mature already at ages sometimes even younger than 40, what will they call them(selves) at and after 55? The problem in the western society is wide misuse and interchange of terminology due to people not knowing what words mean. Someone starts using a term because it sounds good and people follow without questioning it. Sad indeed, especially in today’s age of explosive creativity and thinking.

Mature – age vs. intellect

‘Maturity also means an advanced stage of mental, intellectual, and emotional development. Hence having reached maturity in the mind, thinking, life experience. And I touched on this in the second paragraph too. Yes, a 40 year-old woman will have maturity as against a 20 years-young. But a 55 year-old woman will be more mature even in this sense than a 40 year-old. So where are we? Back to the point I raised in the first paragraph? Do you know people in their 80s who ‘never grew up’? Does that make them mature? Or immature?

I oriented this article at relating being mature purely to age because webmasters do that too. They logically have no choice, because they can’t know how mature in every other sense of the word the women who advertise on their directories are. Thus webmasters must classify advertisers somehow. And so the man looking for a companion on ads and directories will automatically go by the woman’s age. The hidden assumption is that maturity comes with age. A 20 year-young will be less mature than a 45 year-old.

The most words, the least mature usage of them

The English language has the highest number of words of all languages. And I heard somewhere years ago that 4,000 words came into the English language every day! If we go with this postulate, why don’t we brainstorm for a far more appropriate term for the current label ‘mature’ as a marker of age? The appropriate scale of labeling women’s age groups could be:

18 – 30 = young

30 – 60 – middle-aged

60+ = mature.

Is there anything wrong with the term ‘middle-aged’? Not at all. It occupies the second third of life if we divide life into roughly equal thirds of 30 – 60 – 90. Hence it accurately describes the window of life which it denotes. It’s not offensive. And it’s clear and concise. So why not adopt it? Many men say that they find the term /mature’ more attractive than ‘middle-aged’ in connection with a woman. Fair point. But if you are one of them, read this paragraph again…

What do you think? Tell me.