Like me, for example-I am a month from my 52nd birthday, and some people think I am in my mid-to-late-30’s. My face is unlined except for my forehead and some around my eyes, the flesh beneath my chin still firm, a touch of grey around my temple, my body skin still looking pretty flawless. Runs in my family tho-my 2 birth sisters are early-mid 40’s, and one was tickled pink last year when a late-20’s guy hit on her. My adoptive niece was amazed when she met my birth mother and found out that she was in her mid-70’s.
Me too. Right now my hair is mostly gray, but people insist I can’t be old enough to be retired. (I’m 67, 68 in 10 days)
In person, not many. Most people I know in person look roughly their age. But in general celebrities seem to age well, and drug addicts do not. I’m sure a lot of it comes down to smoking, malnutrition, drugs, exposure to the elements, plastic surgery, quality of diet, exercise, etc.
I saw Tom Cruise in his newest movie recently, he doesn’t look 50. Hard to believe all the guys and girls who were considered sex symbols when I was growing up are in their 40s and 50s now.
My father. He just turned 81 and he looks like he’s in his sixties. His hair didn’t start to go gray until he was past seventy and it’s still mostly dark (and he still has all his hair).
I play Scrabble with a woman who I had assumed was in her late 30’s. Turned out she’s in her early 60’s. You could have knocked me over with the Scrabble board when she told me that.
My Dad is 85 and looks like he is about 70. My mother, 83, is muchly amused when people remark how good it is of her son to be so helpful and attentive.
In some cases, longevity helps. Most people wouldn’t assume my grandma is 100 simply because they don’t expect a 100yo woman to be out and about, using no more than a walker (in the retirement home) or a walking stick and her granddaughter’s arm (on the street, and often she waves the stick Charlot-style). Her hair is steel-grey now and she doesn’t so much have a stoop as a hunchback; Grandpa died at 95 and still had some black mixed with the dark grey, a full head of hair, and “the heart of a 30yo”, much to the cardiologist’s chagrin. People didn’t give him a day over 70 even when he was already stooped (he lost over 10cm to that stoop).
My mother and aunt are in their 70s; they get mistaken for 50s, and people who knew my grandma would get visits from her granddaughters have thought they were the grands - nope, the daughters. I’ve met people in their 50s who did look older than they do. Mom dyes Cruella deVille style, has few wrinkles; my aunt has even less wrinkles (we joke that using wrinkle cream will wrinkle you, as Mom does and aunt doesn’t) and that happens to be her own hair color, with just a few white hairs here and there.
I’ve had to show ID to coworkers who though I was “their age” and were off by 10-12 years. A few white hairs, few wrinkles (that single brow furrow, that first line on the lip - like the actress who plays Regina in Once Upon A Time); my neck does show my age but then, I’ve seen people half my age whose neck looks as bad.
I think hair color is a major factor. I worked with a guy who was fifteen years younger than me (he was 32 and I was 47). But my hair was still dark and he had gone prematurely gray. The result was that many people thought he was older than I was.
Even more amusing was the time one of the younger woman in the office was hanging around him. He was definitely interested until he found out her purpose - she was thinking about setting him up with her mother.
Myself. Until I grew a beard a few years ago, even at 25, I was often mistaken for being in high school, young as 16.
I’m 48 and I regularly get carded to buy beer.
I was 32 when I got carded for an R rated movie.
My mother didn’t start looking her age until she was maybe in mid-stage Alzheimer’s. She had very few wrinkles and always took care of herself. Most people thought she was at least 20 years younger than she actually was. She claimed it was because of her Mediterranean genes in that “olive skin doesn’t wrinkle as easily as fair skin”.
Most people think I’m in my late 20s - early 30s. I’m 53. I have no wrinkles, no sagging, only half a “squint” line between my eyes. I am graying, but nobody ever mentions it. Maybe it looks like highlights from a distance?
A few weeks ago I met up with my college roommate and her husband. We hadn’t seen each other for almost 15 years, I think? Her husband’s first reaction upon seeing me : “My god, you have not changed one bit.”
A former workmate looks far younger than he is; he still had door sales people asking “Are your parents in, son?” when he was about 30, which used to drive him nuts. Now he just looks mid twenties when he’s pushing 40, which is definitely an improvement.
Apparently his mother still looks in her late 30s as well, though I’ve not met her.
Incidently, for the hair colour thing, one of my aunts went pure white (almost overnight) at 30, and it paradoxically made her look much younger. Possibly the contrast with her face made it register as white blonde, rather than white.
I’m often told I look a lot younger than my age (my family tends to age well) but years of smoking - I’m now a non-smoker - and years of being outside without using sunscreen has definitely given me facial lines I don’t think I would have had otherwise. I think my face looks 56, but the rest of me doesn’t. I still occasionally get flirted with and hit on by younger men, which is quite flattering!
I have an aunt now in her 80s; she dyed her hair black until just a few years ago. When she went to her natural grey, she looked younger. By that age, the black hair was obviously dyed and she looks softer with grey hair. I let my hair go grey two years ago after almost 40 years of coloring it and since it’s mostly silver now, I’m happy with it.
I’ve noticed that people with darker skin (Mediterranean, black, Indian), all else being equal, tend to “age better.” Thinking of the black people I know who are the same age as me, none have wrinkles or much in the way of grey hair, compared to me. My mother still looks great at 84, she always had more Mediterranean coloring - olive skin, dark hair. I took after my father, a fair-skinned (former) redhead.
My mom has been dying her hair back to black since she was in her 20s, and continues to do so now that she’s 63.
Coupled with her freckled, olive, wrinkle-free skin, she doesn’t look over 50. Could pass for in her 40, even.
My husband is 52 but looks older. He’s bald and what hair he does have is gray and his beard is gray/white. He’s been getting offered the senior discount at restaurants for several years now. He’s only four years older than I am but people assume he’s lots older.
My mom is 71, but looks 20 years younger. Her hair still has almost no gray (a few silver hairs here and there but many fewer that I have!) and she doesn’t color it. When I was a little girl everyone thought she was my teenage sister.
At my daughter’s wedding recently, as the photographer was arranging us for a group photo, she mistook my husband for my dad and tried to have him stand next to his “wife,” my mom. I was much amused but neither of them thought it was that funny. I think if my husband and dad were side by side you’d be hard pressed to tell which one was older.
I’ll be turning 40 in a couple of months, and new coworkers or customers are always shocked when they find out, assuming I’m in my mid-20s. I find that a lot of the coworkers on my shift tend to look younger than their age, though; I’ve joked that it’s because none of us ever see the sun due to working third shift. We’ve got a lot of people of retirement age who look 10 to 20 years younger. It’s still a bit surprising, considering how rampant smoking is on that shift.
I have a coworker who is 70 and looks a good 20 years younger.
Lots of sneak bragging in this thread.
Personally I grew tall young, over six foot at 14ish. Everyone else caught up but then I started losing my hair at 18. So I’ve always looked older, but not in a cool way. Just an ‘aged’ way. Now at 40 I am finally starting to actually look my age.
Not “sneak bragging,” but I’m told I look younger than my age (54). I have only a few gray hairs, which annoys the hell out of my brothers, who are four and six years younger than me and all gray, with some white in there too. I weigh about the same as I did in high school (not 100% sure, don’t even own a scale, but I’m wearing the same sized clothing as I did back then). And my skin looks pretty good, no doubt due to my lifelong aversion to sunlight.
I know a woman, a lawyer, who looks like she’s about 15. She really does. I’m not sure of her exact age, but she’s been practising law for about five years now, which puts her into her thirties. It kind of sucks for her – she has a hard time getting taken seriously.
I work with two men who are close in age, 47 and 50, but due to differing hair color and wrinkling (or lack thereof) one looks about 20 years younger than the other.
As for me, I’m 25, but people routinely think I’m in high school. It helps that I’m pretty short and have a round face, and I still have some acne (arg!). I also have a friend who was going to a high school for a job interview, and the security guard thought she was an eighth grader coming to visit the school to see what it was like.