A 69-year-old Dutch entrepreneur is taking extreme measures to make himself a younger man. Emile Ratelband isn’t trying to make himself feel younger – the self-help guru already says he has the body of a 45-year-old man. Instead, Ratelband is taking legal action to change his date of birth from March 11, 1949, to March 11, 1969, which would essentially remove 20 years from his age if the nearly 70-year-old is successful.
But what does Ratelband, a self-proclaimed “young god” hope to gain from his lawsuit against local authorities who refused to amend his birth certificate? Well, he wants what any guru and “god” wants… better prospects with women.
“When I’m on Tinder and it says I’m 69, I don’t get an answer,” Ratelband told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf (via SkyNews). “When I’m 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position.”
In addition to the emotional stress Ratelband’s age has on his love life, he also says being nearly 70 years old has had an impact on his work and financial prospects, as he believes that clients and other professionals discriminate against the elderly.
“When I’m 69, I am limited,” Ratelband said. “If I’m 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work.”
Ratelband says that his official age doesn’t match up wither either his emotional state of mind or physical state, which he claims is that of a man in his 40s after undergoing a physical with a physician ahead of the suit.
The 69-year-old has already made one appearance in Arnhem in the Netherlands, where he used transgender rights as a precedent for his own defense, saying that people can change their name and their gender, so why shouldn’t he be able to change his age.
“Nowhere are you so discriminated against as with your age,” Ratelband told De Telegraaf.
Unlike with transgender rights, however, there is no legal precedent for a case such as Ratelband’s, and the judge overseeing the case said as much following Ratelband’s early November proceeding.
A final decision should be made in the case by the end of the year, meaning there’s a chance Ratelband could ring in the new year as a younger man with better job prospects and more appealing Tinder profile. And if he is successful, Ratelband could go down as the first person to legally change their age to match their “emotional state,” which could open to the door any number of similar cases involving people wanting to change something about themselves that is typically set in stone.
And while Ratelband uses the battle over gender identity as the basis of his argument, let’s not go trivializing a person’s internal battle with themselves by comparing them to a guy who’s having a hard time getting laid on Tinder.