不论男女,办公室该不该聊其年龄

Last week I was talking to a group of twenty-something women lawyers who had just started work in the City of London. One told me she was fed up with being asked how old she was by middle-aged colleagues and clients. The others agreed: they got asked their age all the time and they hated it. They saw it as a way of undermining their authority and putting them in their place.
不久前，我和一群刚刚开始伦敦金融城从业生涯的20多岁的女律师聊过天。其中一人告诉我，她对年届中年的同事和客户问她年龄感到不胜其烦。其他人也表示赞同：老是有人问到她们的年龄，她们觉得烦透了。在她们看来，问这种问题不过是为了削弱她们的威信，把她们“打回原形”。

When I got into the office the next day I did a survey of the youngest people I could find and asked if the same thing happened to them. Almost all said yes – not just the women, but the men, too.
第二天，到办公室后，我对我能找到的办公室里最年轻的人士做了一项调查，问他们是否也有同样的遭遇。几乎所有人都做出了肯定答复——不仅是女士，男士亦然。

How grim, I thought. Here is another indignity borne by the crunch generation – they are locked out of the housing market, saddled with student debt, struggling to find a decent job, and when they finally land one, they get punished for being young.
我心想，真惨啊。对于“紧缩世代”（crunch generation，指一毕业就赶上经济紧缩的一代——译者注）而言，这是另一项耻辱——他们买不起房，背负着学生贷款，千辛万苦也难以找到一份体面的工作，而当他们终于找到了一份不错的工作，又因为年纪较轻而受到“敲打”。

Yet on closer inspection it is more complicated than that. My sample suggests there is a difference between how the sexes take the question.
然而，经过更仔细的审视会发现，情况比上面所说的更复杂。从我选取的样本中可以看出，男女对这个问题的感受不一样。

To the women, it feels like sexism and ageism in a single shot. But to some of the pushier young men, the question is an opportunity to show off. To be able to say: I’m 23 – and look how much I’ve achieved already – is deeply gratifying.
在女士们看来，这个问题同时具有性别歧视和年龄歧视的意味。而对于一些进取心较强的年轻男士而言，这个问题则提供了一次炫耀的机会。能够回答“我23岁”（潜台词：看看我已经取得了多么了不起的成就），是一件很能带来满足感的事。

Yet for both men and women, at some point in their late twenties and just before the appearance of the first wrinkle, the questions cease. By some unspoken agreement, everyone stops asking.
然而不论男士还是女士，从奔三的某个时候开始、在第一条皱纹出现前不久，这样的问题就消失了。大家似乎达成了某种默契，所有人都不再问这个问题了。

The only people in their thirties who still get asked have either been wildly successful (I know someone of 32 with a board position who gets asked her age a lot) or pregnant women, who are asked by other women anxious about their own dwindling fertility.
年过三十而依然会被问到年龄问题的只有两种人：一种是极为成功的人士（我认识一位刚刚32岁、已成为董事的女士，就经常会被问到年龄），另一种是孕妇——问她年龄的往往是其他对自己生育能力日渐衰减感到焦虑的女士。

What is wrong – and most peculiar – about all this is not that we ask the youngest workers how old they are. It is that we don’t ask anyone else.
所有这一切的问题（同时也是最蹊跷之处），不在于我们问年轻人的年龄，而在于我们从不向任何其他人问这个问题。