The Unbearable Lightness of Adulthood

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Reflections on turning 30

It all started with the lowriders. You know, those skintight jeans favored by teenyboppers everywhere that choke the hips and barely cover the pelvis (the better, apparently, to show off your Hello Kitty thong). When I turned 30, I drove to The Gap and bought a pair. A transparent attempt to reassert my fading youth, it was an utter failure. Not only did I feel silly and verging on the pathetic each time I saw a 9-year-old strutting her stuff in the very same pants (that's what I get for shopping at The Gap), but, aesthetically speaking, the jeans seem designed exclusively to force your love handles out of hiding.

I'm 31 now, officially retired from squeezing into lowriders. It's clear that I'm too old for them, and yet I'm too young for "mom pants" -- those ridiculously high-waisted trousers that flatten your ass into something resembling a large card table. The cut of my pants, though, is the least of my worries. The entire lowriders episode has revealed to me an existential crisis that goes way beyond the wardrobe.

Here I stand, an aging hipster smack between my college graduation and my 40th birthday, and I have no idea how to dress myself, much less navigate my 30s: I'm too old to spend my weekends getting trashed at indie-rock shows and too young to spend them listening to Car Talk and Sound Money. With a mortgage and $40,000 in student loans keeping me awake at night, I'm too old to work temp jobs and lead a more laissez-faire, itinerant lifestyle, but I also feel too young to commit to a career for the long haul.

In a world where "60 is the new 30" (according to a recent AARP magazine cover) and the movie 13 Going on 30 is a big hit with the tweens, what does it even mean to actually be 30? According to a recent New York Times article about the growing popularity of 30th birthday parties, turning 30 has morphed from an "apocalyptic" passage to an occasion for celebration and general whooping it up.

Which sounds great, except that most of the thirtyish people I know don't seem to be whooping it up at any level. Maybe it's because many observers are calling 30 the new threshold of adulthood (you've probably heard the catchphrase "30 is the new 21"), and who wants to trade the salad days of youth for that great unknown?

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