"If a woman tells you she's twenty and looks sixteen, she's twelve. If she tells you she's twenty-six and looks twenty-six, she's damn near forty"
About this Quote
The subtext is less about actual arithmetic than about male anxiety: fear of being fooled, fear of illegitimacy, fear of desiring someone too young and what that implies. Rock flips that dread into a joke that both acknowledges and amplifies cultural paranoia around women’s self-presentation. The “damn near forty” tag isn’t really about forty; it’s a punch at the perceived social penalty for women aging, and the way men narrate age as a kind of deception. The joke depends on sexist conventions (women as liars, youth as currency), then hides behind the laughter those conventions reliably produce.
Context matters: this comes from an era of Rock’s stand-up where he weaponizes stereotypes and taboo topics, not to offer policy proposals, but to force an audience to admit what they already trade in as casual “truth.” It works because it’s nasty, tight, and recognizable - a comic distillation of dating’s marketplace cynicism.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Rock, Chris. (2026, January 14). If a woman tells you she's twenty and looks sixteen, she's twelve. If she tells you she's twenty-six and looks twenty-six, she's damn near forty. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-a-woman-tells-you-shes-twenty-and-looks-172397/
Chicago Style
Rock, Chris. "If a woman tells you she's twenty and looks sixteen, she's twelve. If she tells you she's twenty-six and looks twenty-six, she's damn near forty." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-a-woman-tells-you-shes-twenty-and-looks-172397/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If a woman tells you she's twenty and looks sixteen, she's twelve. If she tells you she's twenty-six and looks twenty-six, she's damn near forty." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-a-woman-tells-you-shes-twenty-and-looks-172397/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
