Fix the Formatting... Later. or, Do Not Go Gently Into That Night Train. 'Shout! Shout! Shout at the Devil!'(if you don't get the reference,don't sue me)

So so many sad stereotypes.  

We need to RETIRE this type of humor!  I smell sexism, ageism and females-can-get-away-with-it stereotyping in here.  ("Hands to yourselves, EVERYone, even the aging oldsters and Jewish grannies who think they're cute..." NO-body is so special they get to break the rules of public expectations in America anymore, NO-body, if you haven't learned that in the past two years, do not go out in public...  No intern jokes; no putting-your-hands-on-others or in-their-popcorn jokes. We'll verbally pound it in you if we have to.  Just not funny, given how we've devolved as a people united in calling the cops on microaggressions not everyone finds "cute".)

Ms. Paul wrote a book about "Starter Marriages" and full disclosure: was the first wife of Bret Stephens, of WSJ and NYT global columnist fame (He was the former Managing Editor-in-Chief at the Jerusalem Post before he took the career demotion in returning to the States to raise children with his second wife, who herself works at the New York Times.)

I wish the Times hired more women who watch women's sports and listen to women's podcasts instead of having so many on staff who continually cheerlead for the men (and people of color/minorities.)

In the running game, it doesn't matter how many years you put in on the team, or who your Daddy or husband or brothers are, or how you look, how much money you have, or don't, or what you weigh, or don't.  Doesn't matter who ya know, who sent ya, or how many connections you've cultivated instead of perhaps culled (even with weeds that are best left untouched or uprooted that help destroy native communities.)  

None of that matters, except how it affects the final performance.  If your "diversity" is real, if you're bringing something special to the table based on how all of the above have helped shape the individual "you", then it will show in the final performance and work product... no?  We'll hear it in your voice.  What you as a unique individual have brought to the table. (Added: I like this woman's voice, just not the tired humor she employs here which seems very much not in her voice, I don't think... Even as a middle-aged mom, she doesn't need to do boomer humor to advance, right?)

Best time wins in the running game.

Fastest runner, first to cross the line, wins.

Doesn't matter if you're young or old, freshman or senior, boy or girl, disabled or fully bodied, dark or light skin, or anywhere on the rainbow spectrum...  If the game is -- lowest time wins, then the lowest time wins.

When American society starts to become more competitive in our real games again -- when we get over using networking, fundraising and social-skill-building metrics as substitutes for performance measures -- we won't need to rely on tired stereotypes.  The winners don't do that.  It slows the game and makes you underestimate the competition because you're not viewing them as individual threats, or teammates.  You're lumping and you're losing.  It explains much about America today.

Pamela Paul:  be better, not be content to call yourself old and just ride it down?  Up your own game, sister, or at least don't drag the rest of us into that Middle-Aged-Woman trap you are falling into.  And for the love of G-d and keeping society civil?  Don't touch anyone else's food in public, strangers especially, because you were taught it's cute by your misguided elders...  (Not everybody had a grandma in their life, much less one like that.)

Use your platform to open your mouth and call out the stereotypes of aging now, don't pretend it was cute, even back then...  Do not go gently into that night train.  Once you get on, it's hard to get off.  Getting off is a viable choice in itself too.

(This isn't how you bring young readers to your product.  Is she trying to alienate the post-Boom readers, or does this appeal to the older eyeballs, laughing down? Don't get it, why this runs prominently, unless they want the ladies to stop following current events?  Let the "old boys" handle things? Girls just wanna have fun?)

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There’s a brutal moment in youth when you go from looking up to your elders to looking somewhat down on them. Or at least seeing them with a more jaundiced eye. Maybe it happens at a party. You glance around the room and realize the gentleman you once saw as distinguished has cheerfully dipped a half-eaten chicken wing into a bowl of hummus. You see what one might politely refer to as a “not young” woman waving her arms around with a little too much gusto on the dance floor. And it hits you: They don’t realize that they’re old.

So how do you know when it’s happening to you?

There are a few signs. For me, it was contentedly listening to my favorite podcast, one in which three funny, charming and totally-with-it co-hosts — the kind of guys I’d want to hang out with, the kind of guys I’d label “cool” or “hip” or what do they call it now — banter around and feel like a part of the gang. Then I reckoned with the fact that they are all in their 50s. Their 50s.

...

Then it starts hitting you repeatedly in the face. It’s all those little moments: waking up after a really good, long night’s sleep only to feel worse off than you did when you got into bed the night before. You don’t bounce out but instead heave yourself up to audible snaps and crackles. You learn that you can inflict a grave injury to your own body simply by reaching for the alarm clock in the wrong way. You know that when you wind up in physical therapy it will not be the result of a marathon or water skiing but because of something that happened on a sidewalk.

It’s in understanding that after a lifetime of incremental improvements to your self-care regimen, you’ve finally figured out how to make your face and hair look the best they possibly can at precisely the moment it’s all for naught. Your resting bitch face that in an earlier decade may have given off a miffed Jeanne Moreau vibe has hardened into something that more closely resembles unbridled fury. ... 

Boomers, we know, didn’t appreciate getting long in the tooth. They’re the ones who started this whole fight against Old. But as a Gen Xer, I have to assume it’s worse for us. Our entire gestalt is built around an aura of disaffected youth. There is no natural progression for that energy into middle age. I don’t see us easing into words like “seasoned” or “mature.” Millennials will no doubt take their own kind of offense to aging when it’s their turn, but that is not our cross to bear.

For we are tired now, and some of this comes as a relief.

Many things are no longer your problem. And plenty of well-worn excuses enable you to shrug off your oldskie ways. If you’re a woman, you can blame it all on hormones, just like a teenager. If you’re a man, you can wave it off as a midlife crisis; you’ve got lots of novels that help explain.

You realize you are getting closer to something inconceivable only a short time ago: the grandma years. When you are a grandma, you won’t even need excuses. You can behave in ways entirely inexplicable to everyone younger than yourself and it will be seen as an eccentricity. You can sidle up to strange men in line for the movies and take some of their popcorn to give to your grandchild, the way my grandma did. You can pretend to have gone entirely batty whenever it suits you. You can pretend you don’t know that you’re shouting or that you can’t hear anything anyone else says.

And you know what? It starts to feel like something to look forward to.

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PS.  You're likely still sexxy, honey.  If you're doing it right, you're much more practiced than you were when you first came into the game, and if you've got appreciative partners, you can up their game too!  Keep on lovin', and don't sell yourself (or other women!!) short...