Age is not important unless you’re a cheese.

Helen Hayes’s quip uses a homely comparison to puncture the social anxiety surrounding aging. By singling out cheese—one of the everyday things that genuinely improves with time—she implies that human worth is not a simple function of years accrued. The joke works because it flips a common cultural assumption (that “older” means “less desirable”) into an absurd category error: people are not commodities whose value is determined by maturation alone. Read charitably, the line encourages self-possession and perspective: age may change circumstances, but it need not dictate vitality, relevance, or dignity.