Like TV's "Younger": Meet the 40 plus Gals Who Party with Millennials
Still from the pilot episode of “Younger”. Photo: TVLand
In the new TVLand show Younger, which debuted yesterday, the Broadway star Sutton Foster plays Liza, a 40-year-old single mother who passes herself off as 26 to get back into the work market…and then finds herself dating and socializing with millennials slightly older than her college-age daughter.
The brainchild of Sex and the City creator Darren Star, the show is full of hilarious zingers. Liza’s new boss, at a publishing house, makes her set up a Twitter account for Jane Austen and start writing her tweets. When Liza’s younger colleagues spy her naked in the locker room at the gym, they express horror that her private zone has gone gray; Liza explains it away by saying it’s the result of trauma she experienced while volunteering in a faraway war zone. And when one of those smug younger colleagues, played by Hilary Duff, says of Liza’s imperious Miranda Priestley-like boss, “She lies about her age. How pathetic is that?”, a flummoxed Liza answers, “Totes pathetic. Hashtag pathetic!”
Still from the pilot episode of “Younger”. Photo: TVLand
But aside from its goofy one-liners pitting Gen Xers against millennials, Younger also hints at the rich possibilities of intergenerational friendship: Liza’s young friends help her realize she’s younger in spirit than she feels, while Liza inevitably become a mentor of sorts, helping them assert themselves with bosses and boyfriends. The show is fun in part because it’s rare to see female friendships with an age span of 15 years or more.
“People usually tend to hang out with people in the same age range, which cuts off the pool of friends you can have,” says Irene Levine, PhD, author of The Friendship Blog and the book Best Friends Forever. “But intergenerational friendships can be extremely rewarding from both sides.”
Just ask L.A.’s Peppur Chambers, 44, who’s in a performance group called The Brown Betties and hangs out with women at least a decade younger than she. “This one girl, who’s 25, said to me, ‘Oh my God, I see myself in you, so I know what I can become,’” says Chambers. “I know all the wrong things to do on a date, so sometimes I’ll play the 40 Card. If a guy doesn’t call them back, I’ll say, ‘He doesn’t like you—don’t waste your emotional energy wallowing about it.’”
Conversely, Chambers says that her young girlfriends help her maintain her sense of fun. “They keep me in the moment,” she says. “If we’re going out til 3 a.m., I’ll say to myself, Okay, we’re going til 3 a.m.”
Still from the pilot episode of “Younger”. Photo: TVLand
That symbiosis is also a plus to Pippa Cohen, 45, an art curator and project manager and a fixture on the New York social scene. As part of her work, she spends at least two or three nights a week out late with creatives in their twenties and early thirties. “I feel useful and helpful to them when I can give them advice on things, if they want it, because I’ve been there,” she says. Meanwhile, the millennials “energize and inspire me,” she says. “They seem more creative, smarter, driven than we were in our twenties—maybe because of social media.”
Lots of women 40 and up say that partying with younger folks is better than it was when they were in their 20s, because they’ve shed prior baggage. “When you’re older, you tend to be more confident and more experienced,” says Amy Sacco, 47, the legendary owner of nightclubs including New York’s No. 8 and Miami’s Rec Room. “Your bullshit meter is higher and you don’t have to try as hard to be taken seriously.”
It helps, Sacco notes, that she needs only a few hours of sleep a night. “I don’t have kids yet, so for me it’s super-easy to stay out. I only have to worry about the kids who work for me. They’re super plugged-in and I’m always discovering new things through them.”
And many women over 40 say that their hard-earned confidence is a turn-on to younger men. “When I turned 41 or 42, 30-year-old guys started coming up to me,” says Cohen, who ended up dating a few of them for awhile. “It’s harder in terms of commitment, but, hey, I can’t complain!”
Or take early-40s New Yorker Kimberly Rochelle Hartman, who designs JADEtribe, a line of beachy handbags and cover-ups. “I was in a club in Bali,” she says, “and the DJ, who was in his 30s, said to me, ‘You just walked across the floor like you owned the room.” Hartman says that her work takes her to party spots like Ibiza, Tulum and Burning Man. “If I feel good in a place, I don’t think about age. I don’t ask people how old they are and I don’t want them asking me.”
And if you’re impressed by fortysomething women who can still stay up and party, take a gander at Gerry Visco, a wild-haired New York writer and club hostess who’s 60 but gives her age as “sexty.” Says Visco: “I’m a night-owl, I live with a 23-year-old and most of my friends are under 30. A 25-year-old guy from OKCupid wants me to go out on a date. I tried dating guys in their 50s but they’re so arrogant and annoying.”
Still from the pilot episode of “Younger”. Photo: TVLand
Of course, she said, having mostly younger friends has its downsides. “They don’t have health insurance or make much money and they can be unreliable. They never answer their phones!”
And sometimes there can be more serious downsides. Hanging out with younger women “makes me feel old sometimes,” admits Chambers. “Sometimes I feel like I missed some time or should be further along, when I see in their eyes that 40 means having a career or family. I’m not there yet, which can be sad.” Cohen echoes that, saying that younger friends are like “a mirror into what you were like at that age. And I wasn’t as evolved as they are.”
The flip side, says Chambers, is having the wisdom to tell her younger friends to stay focused on their dreams. “I remind them that they have choices,” she says. “I say to them, ‘Make sure you’re going after what you want.’”
Says Levine: “Older people can feel inadequate and invisible when they’re with attractive, younger women. But younger people may be threatened by an older person’s life experiences and accomplishments.” The key, says Levine, is to “focus on your commonalities. Diversifying your friendships usually makes life richer.”Sacco agrees. “You can be interesting at 85 or 21,” she says. “There’s something to be learned from all generations. Energy and positive attitude are my laws in terms of who I want to hang around with.”
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