30-year-old grandmas

30 Oct, 2026

I was reading an interview with Nicole Kidman a few weeks ago. In it, she revealed she still likes to go to raves, even at 59:

"Dinner at 10.30 p.m., club at 1 a.m. I’ll put on glasses. Sometimes I’ll wear a wig to hide, a little dark wig, and then I can just dance. [...] I’m not an extrovert and I wouldn’t say I’m the person that walks in and goes, I own this room, [but] I love dancing and I’ll go to a rave because I just want to lose it with a group of people and dance."

On Reddit, I was reading comments about the article (I really need to stop doing this) and they were all like:

"She's still raving at her age? I'm 30 and I would never!"

"I'm 29, my knees would give out if I started dancing!"

"I'm 33 and I'm in bed by 8pm. My back hurts just reading this!"

I've been hearing similar comments in real life too. All my friends are suddenly into crocheting and knitting. They have replaced alcohol with weed and just want to be at home and in bed all the time. I feel like most of this is leftover pandemic behavior, but these same friends use their age as the excuse. "Oh, I'm 30 now. My body can't do this or that anymore."

I'm 40, for reference, so this discourse is wild to me because 30 isn't old to me anymore. If 30 is old, what is the rest of your life supposed to look like? I just don't understand this rush for young people to call themselves old, start cosplaying as grandmas, and call Nicole Kidman "weird" for having a life and not using her age as an excuse to do nothing with it.

I guess the real reason everyone's comments offended me was because, after reading the interview, I thought a rave sounded like fun! There has been a lot of articles lately about Gen X and how they're bringing raves back. Apparently, it's considered therapeutic. You don't have to dance well, gyrate, or try to hook up with people. You just jump up and down and cathartically release whatever it is that needs releasing. Unfortunately, I live in a town that doesn't really have a scene like that, probably because there are too many 30-year-old grandmas who are tucked into bed before Happy Hour ends.

There's nothing wrong with being a homebody, I just think it's annoying when people use age as the excuse, especially the ones who start talking about their knees or backs. Thirty isn't old! You have your whole life waiting for you to be genuinely old: to wear eyeglasses, to get hip replacements, to get cancer screenings. It's like everyone's just looking for an excuse to give up.

That's what I think this is really about: people are using their age as license to do nothing without the social guilt. I understand bodies mature at different rates, but no one in their late 20s/early 30s has any serious physical limitations.¹

I was just talking about this with my dad, who's in his mid-70s. He's a doctor and most of his patients are 30-year-olds with the same weight, cholesterol, and heart issues. He told me about a patient recently who came to him asking for a prescription to one of those weight-loss drugs. Since the patient had a medical history that made the drug's side effects too dangerous, he denied them. Despite this, the patient kept persisting until finally my dad told them, "Listen, you're still young. Have you tried just...riding a bike?"

As he was telling me the story, he then went on a rant: "Young people have the rest of their lives to be old. Why start early? When aging starts, it's completely outside your control. It doesn't matter how well you took care of yourself or how well your diet was. Once aging really starts, your body will start failing and slowing down, and there's nothing you can do about it. But people who are young, they can do something about it. They still have time, and yet they just waste it. So many 30-year-olds are just sitting at home, drinking soda, not exercising, not doing anything. They have all these health problems. It's like they want to be old, and I don't get it. Why start early?"

Although my dad's speech can come across as slightly Boomerish (his generation doesn't understand mental health, and I'm sure some of the patients he describes suffer from depression due to the current state of the world), I agree with his overall point. Why give up when you still have time? Why commit to a life strictly of comfort and not growth? Why not be grateful for the time we still have and try to use it to its fullest?

And why not go to a fucking rave? Hopefully I'll get to go to one soon. Knees and back be damned.

#rant