Dutch man, 69-year-old Emile Ratelband suing to change his age to 49: he feels younger, says he’s ‘outdated’ on Tinder
A Dutch man in Amsterdam is suing to legally chang is age from 69 to 49 using the transgender argument: ““We can make our own decisions if we want to change our name, or if we want to change our gender. So I want to change my age.”
Emile Ratelband, 69, says he feels younger: “Nowadays, in Europe and in the United States, we are free people,” Ratelband told the Washington Post in an interview published Thursday. “We can make our own decisions if we want to change our name, or if we want to change our gender. So I want to change my age. My feeling about my body and about my mind is that I’m about 40 or 45.”
Ratelband argues that he has the physical and mental fitness of a much younger man, and a legal declaration to that effect would benefit him both professionally and romantically.
“If you’re 69 on Tinder, you’re outdated,” explained Ratelband, who has seven kids but is “now without a partner.”
He says he doesn’t want to simply change his age on his profile, because “if you lie, you have to remember everything you say.”
He argues that he has the physical and mental fitness of a much younger man, and a legal declaration to that effect would benefit him both professionally and romantically.
Ratelband explains that his actual age has been a sticking point for potential clients concerned he can’t “speak the language of young people” despite being more knowledgeable and experienced than younger competitors.
Ratelband agreed to see professionals to ensure he wasn’t a “victim of the Peter Pan syndrome,” as he put it. He convinced experts that he wasn’t deluding himself, he said, and that he understood the consequences of his actions.
His desire to remake himself is distinctly American, he said, and comes from his training under Tony Robbins, believing that “you have to make your dreams come true from visualization.”
“This is American thinking,” he said. “Why can’t I change my age if I want to? You have to stretch yourself. If you think you can jump one meter, now I want to jump 20. If you earn 100 grand a month, now I want to earn 120 grand.”