Aging & Wisdom Quote by Mignon McLaughlin

McLaughlin lands the punchline by pairing two taboos of negotiation: a woman’s age in a culture obsessed with youth, and a buyer’s “final price” in a marketplace built on haggling. The wit isn’t just in the comparison; it’s in how casually it treats “true age” as strategic information, not identity. Age becomes currency, something you disclose only if it advantages you. That’s the joke’s sting: it frames honesty as naivete when the social game is rigged.

The line also performs a neat bit of misdirection. It sounds like it’s teasing women for secrecy, but the real target is the economy of desirability that makes secrecy rational. If youth is treated as a woman’s market value, then withholding age reads less like vanity and more like self-defense. McLaughlin, a mid-century journalist writing in an era when women were routinely judged by appearance, uses the language of commerce to expose the transaction hiding inside “polite” social questions.

Then there’s the Armenian rug dealer: a stock figure meant to signal expert bargaining and, uncomfortably, ethnic stereotyping. That detail situates the quote in its time, when casual ethnic caricatures could be deployed as shorthand for “savvy negotiator.” It’s underscore-as-context: the joke’s efficiency relies on a prejudice the culture already recognizes, which makes the line feel sharp and dated at once.

What makes it work is its compressed cynicism. Everyone’s bargaining; the only debate is who gets called “dishonest” for playing by the rules.