I am obsessed with “Younger,” the TV Land comedy about a 40-year-old divorced mother from NJ played by Sutton Foster, who passes herself off as a 26-year-old because that’s the only way she can get a job in NYC’s publishing world.
Let’s for a moment forget the most ridiculous aspects of the show: She has a best friend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with extra room in a spacious loft; a thrift shop/hipster wardrobe that only a stylist could throw together; and, get this, an adoring twentyish tattoo-artist boyfriend.
OK, it’s all fantasyland, but there is also something of substance here that goes to the heart of how hard it can be for a woman to reclaim her career after she gets off the merry-go-round to care for her children. So many women I know – from 40 to 60 – are still trying to figure this out: How to balance career and family. Every woman’s story is different. I’ve tried it lots of ways – on and off the merry-go-round through three careers – but I never thought to lie about my age. How could I? I could never get away with it. There’s Facebook and yearbooks and everything else to give me away.
Although the show is mostly played for laughs – Liza Miller must be the only 40-year-old who doesn’t know what Twitter is when she starts her job – there are some ugly stereotypes. Her boss, Diana, a severely made-up, divorced (and possibly childless) woman in her 40s, is a bitch from old school drama, and one who stands in the way of Liza’s success. And the male head of the publishing house is crushing on Liza and ignoring age-appropriate women like her boss.
Yet, the show is clever, and as Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic for The New Yorker observes, “The goofy premise suggests an alternative view of the generation gap.” So, it comes as no surprise when a few of my students tell me they’re watching “Younger,” too. Why? It’s all about Hilary Duff; they grew up with her. Hilary plays the perky, ambitious Kelsey, who is loyal to her sometimes clueless colleague Liza. And also cries on her shoulder whenever she screws up. Only a few years out of college, Kelsey is creating the successful life my students can only dream of. She’s already getting her own publishing imprint for millennials.
Perfect. “Younger” is a fantasy for mothers and their daughters.
twice30 