We’re not getting older, we’re getting better
Just as in Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average, it seems that most “older” people (defined as over seventy) are convinced they look younger than they actually are. About ten years younger on average, in fact.
They also say they feel about thirteen years younger—at least in Berlin, where the study was done. And preliminary results in the US are consistent with its findings.
Women are less sanguine about the difference between their looks and their actual age. They estimate themselves to be younger-looking than their age, but not by as much of a gap as their male counterparts.
The article has a few thoughts about why people tend to say they look younger than average, but I have some theories to add. The first is that the study doesn’t seem to have taken into account the fact that quite a few people, even in that age group, have now had cosmetic surgery. So they may indeed look younger than their chronological age (although the less fortunate of them end up looking as though their eyebrows and hairline are about to merge).
Another idea—and the one I think is operating most strongly in the group as a whole—is that we are not sure how people get their notion of what a certain age normally looks like. My guess is that most of us base it on how we perceived our parents and grandparents when we were growing up.
Aside from the fuzziness of memory, which can cloud the issue, I believe there is a very real difference between then and now. Back then people allowed themselves—or maybe even forced themselves—to dress and act older, befitting their age and dignity. And, at least in urban settings, they didn’t exercise as much into their later years. In rural ones, life tended to be harder than it is today, and it wore people out faster.
I find I can’t tell how old people are at all just by looking at them. Most of the time, of course, I don’t check, and people don’t wear their ages on their sleeves. But among my friends, we all tend to look—well, at least ten years younger than we are. Which must make us just about average.
I have no problem with people dressing “younger”. As long as I don’t see a 300 pound man or woman in spandex pants or bicycle shorts. Reason I quit watching Jerry Springer and Maury.
dane: That reminds me of a great lyric from Leonard Cohen’s “Closing Time“—“she’s a hundred but she’s wearing something tight.”
I think it also has to do with hair coloring. I’m a boomer, and when I was young, the “old” women, i.e., my grandmother’ generation, all had gray hair. My mom and her friends colored theirs, as I do.
TV and movie images of women may play a role too. We who are now old see ourselves as much less limited than the matriarch types we viewed as kids.
I am a 56 years old. I see myself every morning shaving (except Saturday, I refuse to shave on Saturday) in the mirror. I don’t think I look my age. That is, until I see a photo of myself and realize I actually look older than I am. I know most women dye their hair, or layer it and apply many shades. Many men do the same as well these days. I’ve been all gray for years. Started turning gray in my 20’s.
My daughters bought me some temporary hair color for men about 6 years ago (my 50th b-day) and asked me to try it. I put it in my hair, eyebrows and mustache. It took an immediate 10 years or better off me. We had a few laughs, took a few pictures, and I washed it back out. It’s tempting.
Neo
Every time I think of Leonard Cohen I think of the terrible job Noel Harrison did of “Suzanne”. that was one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar – after mastering the songbook of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sit Down Young Stranger” (later renamed “If you Could Read My Mind” when that song became a hit). I long for the days of Tim Hardin singing “Misty Roses” and Danny O’Keefe singing “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” or “Magdalena”. I am too old, but glad I grew up in a time when songs like that could be tuned in on FM.
“… we all tend to look–well, at least ten years younger than we are.”
Well, maybe in your dreams…
Sounds like another boomer thing: I’m 40 and I look careworn. I recently started shaving my head ‘cuz the hair thing finally flat-lined. Oh, I’m in great shape; I work out vigorously and frequently, but no one would mistake me for thirty, at least not from the neck up.
I’m not a metrosexual. I could probably use some moisturizer and some less stress, but that’s not in the cards for a while. Gen-X isn’t aging well. It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.
Wifey, however, has the “10 years younger” thing going on….
OK, this post prompted me to look at your picture again: from what I can tell around the “Magritte Green Apple”, you can claim the 10 years younger thing.
Just don’t do the Joe Botox Biden or John Kerry frankenforehead thing, or the Algore orangey glow thing.
Growing old gracefully is a character thing. It’s rare nowadays.
I saw an old picture of my husband’s grandmother and her two sisters… ages 17, 19, and 20ish… They looked OLD. They even had saggy boobs. They had old hair styles and their dresses were old-lady dresses.
OTOH, I remember how ancient my grandmother always looked… and she’ll be 101 this February! It seemed like she never looked any older and she looks almost the same now… but what did she *really* look like 40 years ago? At age 50? 55? When I see pictures of her, she has the old lady hair style and the grandma dress… but she looks 35 or 40 years younger than she looks at 100… because she was!
🙂
Keeping weight in check and most of all posture, posture, posture are both important factors in looking youthful as we age.
When I “interview” a hairstylist, one of the questions I always ask is whether she (lately they’ve all been “she”) has clients who want her not to cover their gray, but to help them go gray gracefully. Because that’s what I want to do.
The question is, when? I’m 42 now, and I color my hair back to what it was before children and Seattle took their toll. Will I be ready to let myself go gray at 45? 50? (I think by 50 I’ll want it to start. But not necessarily finish…)
The other question is, which gray? My grandfather’s hair was beautifully silver – but he started with black; my grandmother’s hair was always that weird color that blonde hair so often turns as it grays, and that’s what I’m headed for. So do I color my hair toward the gray I’ll be naturally, so I can eventually give up the coloring altogether, or do I pick a gray I like? Too many options!
Then, of course, I was in the gym the other day working out beside a guy who was kicking my 42-year-old butt, and looked to be somewhere in his mid-50s. Of this I heartily approve, and plan to kick some 30-year-old butt in the New Year.
Jamie: Hate to be the bearer of bad tidings (and perhaps I’m wrong), but I don’t believe you can color your hair gray. People with gray hair used to use rinses to give it a certain tint—that’s what all those little old ladies with blue-ish hair were about. Rinses like that are not used all that much any more, or perhaps they’ve been improved and are not so noticeable. But in general, going gray is going to your natural gray color, which is a mix of white hairs and hairs that have retained the original color. That’s why blonds go gray differently than brunettes.
You can, of course, continue to color your hair a color. But not gray.
I don’t know about “looking younger”, but you can look better, primarily by attending to your health – weight, smoking, alcohol, reasonable diet, overall lifestyle, blah, blah.
But to make my main messge very short: exercise, my friends, exercise. Use it or lose it. Your body was made to physically work! Form does follow function, and function follows actual use.
Carry on.
Growing older is accepting that wrinkles and wisdom are synonyomous..
Growing older is accepting that wrinkles and wisdom are synonymous..