I’m in my early forties. I have a brother 18 months younger than me. When we were growing up we looked so much alike we were sometimes mistaken for twins. On at least one occasion my mother told the movie ticket seller we WERE twins so she could get me in for free :rolleyes:.
I have flecks of gray in my hair but relatively few wrinkles, although I do have bags under my eyes.
My brother’s job for at least the last ten years has been much more stressful than mine (he’s a manager at an IT company and has had to lay off many people, and is in constant fear for his own job). His temples are completely gray and his face is much more lined than mine is. I look like the younger brother now.
It’s kind of strange, I really worry about his health more than exult in my comparative youthful looks. It’s all just surface impressions anyway.
People think I’m in my early 30s, but I just turned 40. I drink like a fish and smoke like a trooper, too, so I guess I’d look a lot younger than that if I lived a better lifestyle (my clean-living brother, aged 35, gets student fares on buses and so on, so it runs in the family).
I fucking love it! It has a particular benefit with me, as I’m a trifle immature and can get away with not acting my age; and I spent several years messing about in my life, travelling the world and so on, and am therefore not quite as advanced in my career as I should be for my age, but since I have roughly the correct career for the way I look, people’s perceptions of me in the office aren’t negative in this regard.
It’s much different when you’re 21-25 and being mistaken for a teenager, than when you’re 35+ and being mistaken for being 10 years younger.
There’s really no downside to the latter, so hopefully you don’t go bald in your mid-20s or something and can live to enjoy it when you get there!
As for me, I’m 36 (turning 37 in about one more month) and people often still think I’m in my late 20s. I had to lose 50 lbs. for this to start happening (one good way to lose 10 years off your appearance when you’re 36 and overweight is to get back into shape), but it’s pretty cool.
As The Who sang, I look pretty young, but I’m just backdated, yeah.
I’m 49, and I still look younger than 40. It’s pretty nice, I guess, considering that I know guys younger than me who look older. My wife appreciates it. I came to the US when I was 39. The first time we went to the supermarket, I was carded buying tobacco. It hasn’t happened since, though. I must just be lucky. Whatever reason I don’t look my age, clean living isn’t it!
This is me as well. The only thing that bothers me is when I get carded and hand over my driver’s license, I always get this weird, incredulous reaction from the waiter, like they were just sure they had caught me trying to sneak by, and I was going to sheepishly admit I was underage. Nope… you asked for the card, here it is.
My dad has always looked a good 10-15 years younger than he actually is, so I have an idea of what’s coming. I think I’m going to appreciate it a lot more when I’m 55 and look 40.
I’m 35 but, except for some slightly thinning to my hair, look pretty much the same as I did when I was 20. Teenaged girls hit on me all the time, and I’ve had people think I’m joking when I introduce my wife, who is the same age as me and looks her age. I’m always afraid people think I have an older lady fetish when they see me being affectionate with my wife.
I’ll be 46 in seven months. Throughout my 20s I looked like a teenager. I looked 10 years younger than I was throughout my 30s. People now say I look to be around 37-38, and I can see my appearance slowly catching up to my actual age. I’m definitely better looking now than I was in my 20s when I had a serious case of ‘emaciated nerd’ …the glasses didn’t help.
I love maturing physically, and being chatted-up by thirty-somethings never gets old :).
I’ve never been carded though. Did they card in the 80s?
I’m 29 and depending on my facial hair I look as young as late-teens. For some reason contacts make me look younger, too. You’ll just have to get used to being carded for a long time, and yes, it is really nice to look young. Me looking particularly young (circa 2006).
I’m pushing 42, and so entering into the zone where I’m beginning to appreciate it. But I’ll tell you what worries me – my oldest daughter will be in her mid-teens in a few years, which means when I’m out with her, I’ll have people going, “Is that her father, or…?” Of course, by that time and thanks to her, I probably will look my age.
I’m 44 and pass for younger. I have all my hair, plus it’s strawberry blonde and doesn’t show the grey.
I find it’s a good thing now because I’m still [del]beating my head against the wall[/del] fronting a rock band and I wouldn’t want to be too fully in the patheticsphere.
It feels good to be ahead of some part of the game somewhere, though I fully recognize the big picture’s a wash, anyway.
I hated looking younger than my age when I was younger, though. Chicks your age don’t dig that.
It’s not just how I associate with women that bothers me. I think I’m pretty attractive, and I don’t have trouble meeting women. As my grandma predicted, I’m “beating them off with a stick.” In this one instance, believe it or not, Sex isn’t foremost on my mind.
There’s a whole power play in the dominance hierarchy that men subscribe to. “You look like a teenager!” isn’t just a statement on how I look, but an indirect way of associating an otherwise capable adult with immaturity, and re-iterating that “older=wiser” heuristic that’s drilled into us from childhood.
That’s what bothers me the most. It’s having to act even more mature than I want to, to get the “you’re so mature for your age” perception in order to counteract this natural bias.
I’m 33 and I guess I look low to mid 20s, depending. My hair is starting to thin so it helps if I wear a hat. If I shave off my facial hair and wear baseball cap I am sometimes mistaken for a teen. It has never been an inconvenience for me though. I get carded, but so what? Many places card everybody anyway, and I certainly wouldn’t expect a retail clerk to have been trained in the fine art of guessing age by sight. Especially since who ever does oversight undoubtedly finds older looking underage people in their sting operations. I do appreciate it now that I’m older, but on the other hand, I never found it to be any kind of burden.
I’m usually mistaken for 3 or 4 years younger than I am, but that’s only since I grew a goatee. Before that, it was easily 7 or 8 years (or more). When the time is right and I feel I need to start looking younger again, the plan is to shave it off and shave a few years away with it.
Although I can’t imagine that happening for another 20 years or so.
