The mere title makes you feel ill, doesn’t it?! Unless you belong to the group of people who really believe that one should. Act one’s age.

What does it even mean? That one should look and behave like most of the people that age do – or did or have done the past decade or so ? With total disregard of personal preferances but succumbing to prevalent expectations – whatever they are, in whatever culture.

Most Westerners dislike or even loathe the way some Eastern (i.e. Muslim) women are supposed to look, taking on themselves a big chunk of what should – in the Western mind –  be men’s own responsibility of their supposedly rampant and otherwise ungovernable sexuality.

Most Westerners have little regard to such limiting code of behavior,  seemingly devoid of freedom and personal choice.

Yet some of them see no problem in limiting the choices of their fellowmen in their own culture. They cast disapproving looks at the looks of others, and one can only wonder why.

Is it because they so try to “act their age” themselves, that they can’t stand if others don’t put in the same effort?

Or is it because they so believe in the unwritten code of behavior that breaking it almost feels like a violation?

In that respect it differs little from the unwritten, culturally preconditioned expectations a Muslim woman has in the most patriarchal societies in the East. The biggest difference is that in Western societies we don’t get punished for these “violations of code”.