What’s My Age Again?
My friends say I should act my age
Prof. Peter Hoberg: You know how old I am?
Jesse Fisher: No, how old are you?
Prof. Peter Hoberg: It’s none of your goddamn business. Do you know how old I feel like I am?
Jesse Fisher: [shrugs]
Prof. Peter Hoberg: 19. Since I was 19, I have never felt not 19. But I shave my face, and I look in the mirror, and I’m forced to say, “This is not a 19-year-old staring back at me.”
[sighs]
Prof. Peter Hoberg: Teaching here all these years, I’ve had to be very clear with myself, that even when I’m surrounded by 19-year-olds, and I may have felt 19, I’m not 19 anymore. You follow me?
Jesse Fisher: Yeah.
Prof. Peter Hoberg: Nobody feels like an adult. It’s the world’s dirty secret.
This snippet of dialogue is from one of my favorite movies, Liberal Arts. I included it here because I liked this question of how old we feel versus how old we are, and the role the mirror plays in that.
A few years ago, I was babysitting my goddaughter and her friend. When her friend arrived, I heard my goddaughter whisper: “She’s a grown-up, but she plays like a kid.” When I got home that day and looked in the mirror, I looked older. I seldom thought about my age, but when I stared at my reflection I looked like I used to see adults when I was a kid. Seeing myself through their eyes, I could see every year that led me there much more clearly than that afternoon when I was playing with them.
In an interview with Elle, Taylor Swift said “According to my birth certificate, I turn 30 this year. It’s weird because part of me still feels 18 and part of me feels 283, but the actual age I currently am is 29.”
Age is, technically, objective. It’s the length of time that a person has lived. And yet, how young or old we feel, so seldom has to do with that number. This feeling does not necessarily wait until your birthday for an update, it can vary from month to month, week to week, day to day. It can respond to a conversation, an event, or a look in the mirror.
“Don’t look your age”
I don’t know if it’s just me but, lately it feels like we’ve traded “act your age” for “don’t look your age.” Mirror mirror on the wall: show me young and beautiful.
I don’t think we rebel against our age. Age is inevitable, we live and so we age. Anti-age marketing doesn’t say “die now”, it says “hide the passing of time”. We are surrounded by anti-age products and they are not, as far as I know, suicide potions. As Matt Haig accurately states in Notes on a Nervous Planet “We still aren’t immortal. All these products aiming to make us look younger and glowing and less death-like are not addressing the root problem. They can’t actually make us younger. Clarins and Clinique have produced a ton of anti-ageing creams and yet the people who use them are still going to age.” (Haig, 57) Instagram filters and photo-editing apps are just as useless in this regard.
Talk of “aging” today seems to be focused solely on the effects of time on our body, when in reality every year we live, shapes more than our bodies. I’ve had conversations with friends and colleagues where they wishfully say “Oh to be 20 again!” and there’s always somebody who quickly adds “To be 20 again, but knowing what I know now”. Because age brings more than gray hairs and wrinkles. If we can focus on that, then maybe we can start to see the physical aspects of aging in a different light.
“Finn’s smile-wrinkles create paths across his face when relaxed, like rivers on a map. Deltas and fjords carved by past happinesses”. Jenny Mustard, Okay Days
The writing prompt questions that led me to write this post were personal. Is aging something you push against? What does aging look like to you? What insights have you gained? But we are a product of our time. We can contain great contradictions. I believe we need to shift our perspective on aging, but seeing gray hairs in the mirror I still struggle to respond with a smile. Can we be “pro-age” and still dye our hair?
This year I’ve noticed more aging souvenirs than in years. I’ll look in the mirror and see these little differences and contemplate these contradictions. I guess I’m still figuring it out.
I hear twenty-year-olds saying they’re taking collagen and preventive Botox shots, and it makes me think I need to look in the mirror with preventively kinder eyes.
“Own your age”
What would a pro-aging attitude look like? Is it simply to care less about these things brands would have us obsess over? Is it to somehow weigh out our acquired wrinkles against our gained wisdom? I have a feeling that if age was measured in terms of wiseness, we’d feel like we moved forward at a lot slower pace.
Perhaps we ought to pay less attention to brands and more to our older people. My downstairs neighbor is over 90, he looks old but he also looks like he has a lot of energy. He likes to say: “Oh to be 80 years old again”. Surrounded by people who think hitting 40, 50, 60 is stressful, to hear him praise 80 made my day.
My grandmother recently turned 83. Talking about her birthday she said she realized that there were things she did differently. She walks slower, and she gets tired more easily, but she “doesn’t feel old”. And there it is again: age is not a feeling and yet it’s a thing we feel.
“I would love women to be allowed to see growing older not as a failure, but as an immense achievement and as something that we are very grateful for. We are lucky to have life. It’s a privilege.” Jameela Jamil
Maybe we need to rewire our brains to translate signs of aging as victories. Maybe it’s even simpler than that. Maybe accepting the inevitability of it, frees us up to focus on the now.
Every selfie and photo we pick apart today, scrutinizing our skin, and lines, and tiny details, are photos we’ll look at years from now thinking we looked young. Here’s a piece of truth: you will never again look as young as you do today. Enjoy it!
Perhaps “own your age” is nothing more than “be your age” and what can be simpler than that?
“There are billions of different versions of an older you. There is one version of the present you. Focus on that”. (Haig, 65)
References & other mentions
- Haig, Mat. 2019. Notes on a Nervous Planet. Canongate.
- Mustard, Jenny. 2023. Okay Days. Hodder & Stoughton
- Sweeney, Tanya. 2021. “Jameela Jamil: ‘I wasted years crying in front of the mirror,” IrishTimes. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/Fashion/beauty/jameela-jamil-i-wasted-years-crying-in-front-of-the-mirror-1.4505240
- Swift, Taylor. 2019. “30 Things I Learned Before Turning 30,” Elle.com https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a26628467/taylor-swift-30th-birthday-lessons/
- Liberal Arts Trailer
