Judy Mandell Honesty

In her essay “Sometimes Honesty Is the Worst Policy”, best-selling author Judy Mandell discusses her experiences with lying about age, and the effects that those experiences have had on her. She uses strong examples such as an elderly relative who changed her birth date on her passport, and was almost arrested, and when she told the headmaster at her place of employment her true age, and lost her job. She begins with the idea that lying about her age is something she’s come to accept, but towards the end of the essay, after discussing how much respect her editor has for her due to her age, she claims that she is less nervous about it and has come to accept her age. Through the use of both humorous and upsetting anecdotes, Judy Mandell creates …show more content…
She does this using the conclusions of multiple occurrences of each. For example, when her elderly relative lied about her age on legal documents, she was “nearly arrested by U.S. Immigration officers” (Mandell), while a friend who was honest about their age told her that “When younger people know I’m in my mid-50s, they treat me differently” (Mandell). These two specific examples inform the reader that bad outcomes can come out of both lying and telling the truth about …show more content…
She explains the purpose of lying about age throughout the entire essay by explaining the cause of an individual hiding their age, such as her friend whose “husband left her for a younger woman”, and the effect, such as that same friend deciding to “tell her age if she finds someone she wants to settle down with.” (Mandell). This develops an idea of why people would lie about their age in the first place, and what can occur from it. She does this on the other hand, too, by discussing the cause of her beginning to hide her age, which was losing her job, and the effects that it had on her self-esteem, causing her to worry and obsess about people’s reactions to her