Obsessed with Age

We drink a lot of diet Coke products in my house (At least we used to. Both Lisa and I are trying to cut back). As a result, Lisa has taken to collecting My Coke Rewards. And there's a lot of free stuff on there, but we got a lot of--at least at first--are magazines. And I've noticed something about the different entertainment magazines that we have: they all seem obsessed with age. Every person listed in these magazines has his/her age revealed at some point ("Taylor Swift, 20, was a big winner at the Grammy's the other day" or "Mel Gibson, at age 54, is trying to make a comeback after eight years away from the big screen.").

I've yet to figure out why these magazines are so obsessed with age. I've had a subscription to either Time or Newsweek for each of the last 15 years or so, and these magazine aren't obsessed with age. I've never read, "President Obama, 48, is finding his health care coalition falling apart." I also don't recall ever reading "53 year old Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hit the club scene in New York after his speech before the U.N."

I'm not sure what the difference is. The only thing I can think of is that people who read these magazines fantasize about having a relationship with the celebrities, and the age is an important barometer of whether or not that reader is compatible with that celebrity. Or maybe that's a dumb idea.

It's just the only one I can come up with.