You could pass for 26 years old...
As I’m approaching my 35th birthday, this answer made me feel a lot of things
A few weeks ago, I was in a middle of a conversation, when the person I was speaking to, told me they had shown someone a recent photo of me. They reported back to me what was said, which was that I could pass for 26. As my birthday is just around the corner, it made me think about my relationship with age, beauty and looks. It felt like something big I wanted to explore and writing about it turned out to be incredibly cathartic.
When I was in my mid-to-late twenties, I got a certain kick out of being carded whenever I tried to buy anything with an age restriction on it. I would feel a thrill when I produced my ID and the store manager or bartender did a double take as they read my date of birth and then proceeded to tell me how young I looked for my age. As it kept happening it became a form of conditioning, where I connected praise and beauty to looking young. And as I was quite insecure and shy during my twenties having these encounters felt rewarding and reassuring.
When it stopped happening, it came like a bolt from the blue. This sudden change made me feel discombobulated, sad and disappointed. And it left me wondering why these strong emotions rose to the surface so quickly. Over time I realised that the feelings connected to being told I looked young were a mixture of enjoying the flattery, a pinch of insecurity and society’s obsession with looking young. Thus creating a socially learnt idea that looking young equated to being an attractive woman. As this wasn’t happening anymore, was I deemed unattractive? You only had to turn on the TV, see an advert or go to any cosmetic shop or counter to see the amount of products produced that offered to create the perfect female image and a youthful glow1.
By and large, growing up there was not a lot of female representation in films and television. There were hardly any women who were past a “certain” age (hate the whole ‘certain age thing’ btw) and most of the female stars and characters I saw were ingénues, often playing against men who were much older than them. And being young and beautiful or turning from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan was a main character plot point.
The relationships and lifestyles women wanted were also portrayed in a very linear way and hardly any diverted from a traditional viewpoint. Growing up during the 90s and early 2000s, I was fed on the staples of Disney Princess movies and teen dramas imported from America, full of beautiful, rich people creating an aesthetic that was unattainable and not diverse in any way. Which was further peddled in the teen magazines I was reading and the adverts I was seeing, where women were represented in a stereotypical way.
So by the time I reached my twenties, all of this had been ingrained into me and made up my views on appearance and what equated beauty. It also made me very self-aware, in fact it made me hyper aware of myself, and it took me to my 30s to find the strength and self-belief to change my perceptions.
As time passed attitudes and portrayals of women were slowly changing, and I realised that my views on beauty were skewed and that looking youthful wasn’t something that I needed to aspire to. I was learning to accept myself, and my mind was evolving, opening and adapting to a new way of thinking. As my world expanded so did my interactions, I was meeting women whose lifestyles and values began rewiring how I thought and felt about things. An internal lightbulb went off and I was retraining my beliefs and ideas about how I was meant to live my life. I was surrounded by women in their 30s, 40s and 50s who had created lives for themselves that didn’t fit the cookie-cutter mould, who lived interesting, varied lives that were inspirational, and whose beauty shone from within.
What I consumed also changed, and it created a knock-on effect, it felt like I was finally stamping out a fever that had raged for far too long inside of me. As time passed and as I got older, I realised that I had become more comfortable and confident with myself and my appearance. Every marker of age and time on my face and body served as a reminder of how far I had come and what I had encountered.
Now when I go out I’m not dressing or presenting myself in a way to seek approval or praise. I was hyper-aware of my appearance and other’s reactions, and now I feel totally the opposite. The way I present myself is entirely in my own construct and I’ve taken back my power. I don’t care if I go out without a scrap of makeup, and I no longer feel a thing when I don’t get carded when I buy an age restricted item. Time, maturity, reflection and life experience has taught me that it’s not all about the surface, but in fact what lies within.
“The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome,”
Derek Walcott, Love after Love
Whilst I was writing this piece, I googled ‘looking younger then your age’ and I found it very interesting to see that a majority of the answers were skewed to how to look younger for your age and that under suggested things to further explore, that women were the second most suggested connected thing whilst men were eighth.