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 And why its well outdated usage is conventionalized so deeply that nobody questions it when surfing the net for a new friend.  So if you’re now curious and want to be more mature about the concept of mature, … 

Now too young

Perhaps in the past decades society’s male part thought that being a courtesan was a young girl’s game, similarly to modelling. Now in the 21st century courtesans start being interesting at 40 and the best ones are the older and oldest ones!  They are the best ones because ‘mature’ comes with age and is a measure of adulthood, emotional control, wisdom, insight, and a certain gravity.  And even models and women who aren’t courtesans but purport to be them now occur at every age. Hence…

…if we connect ‘mature’ purely to age, considering that the life expectancy of people around the world is rising and hearing of people living to their mid 90s and even past 100 is now normal, 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 a half of a woman’s life. Of course, a woman at 40 could perfectly well be mature or immature by all other connotations of this word!  Hence I started this paragraph with saying ‘if we connect mature purely to age.

So if webmasters of directories and sheeple independents market themselves as mature already at ages sometimes even younger than 40, I shudder to think what they’ll call them(selves) at 55 or older! 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 and sheeple follow without questioning it. Sad indeed, especially in today’s age of explosive creativity and thinking.

Mature – physically vs. intellectually

‘Mature’ also means intellectually well developed, having reached an advanced stage of mental and emotional development. Hence maturity in 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 year-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?

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 this is the case and new words are coming into English more and more from other cultures and languages, why don’t we brainstorm for a far more appropriate term for the current label ‘mature’?  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.