When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win: Reflections on Looking in the Mirror
By Carol Leifer
Published by Villard Books, 2009
ISBN 978-0-345-50296-4, 0-345-50296-5
Carol Leifer is a funny woman. Anyone who has ever witnessed her stand-up or caught one of her twenty-five appearances on Late Night with David Letterman can attest to that. It’s her facial expressions – led by that famous chin – that get the ball rolling. By the time the punchline works its way to center stage, the audience is already grateful for the moment.
And now the funny lady has written her first book. When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win: Reflections on Looking in the Mirror reads like a slumber party for middle-aged women, where the make-up tricks and pointless giggling go out the window, and are replaced with smart, caustic, hilarious commentaries on life. The author covers everything from coming to terms with the laws of gravity to relishing the moment when the pantyhose slide off and the sweatpants come on to making peace with whatever shows up in the mirror. Definitely things with which women “of a certain age” can identify. Leifer shines through her debut as someone who is clearly comfortable with the woman she is becoming and confident that the best is yet to be – regardless of the ever-younger double-Xs that Hollywood seems to worship.
Leiferisms to Live By
On things men should know:
“Taking advice about women from overweight Hawaiian-shirt-wearin’ radio shock jocks will get you where they are…sitting alone by themselves in a very dark room” (85).
On keeping the peace:
“White lies are like the packing peanuts of any relationship” (124).
On maintaining sanity while earning a paycheck:
“Don’t take things personally with customers’ idiotic requests. Less information shared is always better than more. Scheming bosses have a tendency to fail upward” (120).
On life’s many, many curveballs:
“It’s funny how just another day can quickly turn into the most important day of your life. But now I simply try to make sure that just another day and the most important day are always the same day” (111).
On apathy towards the fight for Women’s Rights:
“The road ahead? It’s still unpaved. Oh, I’m happy to stand up for your vagina. But frankly, mine’s tired and would enjoy a nice cup of tea right about now” (70).
Uh, Did She Really Just Say That?
Where Leifer grates in When You Lie About Your Age is in her attempts at being – for lack of a better word – “hip.” For someone who manages to cleverly tap into the aging-woman experience, from time to time she disrupts the effect with inane jargon that induces bouts of eye-rolling. Case in point: The chapter “Preventive Medicine.” In it, she walks the reader through a routine breast exam that turned into a cancer scare, something with which every woman who has ever suffered a mammogram will instantly connect. It is by far one of the most poignant chapters in the book. But she undermines the momentum that she skillfully builds with lines like, “Sickness and disease don’t stand a chance if you’re all up in their Kool-Aid with diagnostic tests…” (102). Um. OK. The desire to inject levity into a morbid topic is completely understandable, particularly for a comedian. For Leifer’s female audience, however, it isn’t necessary.
 |
