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Home » On the perception of aging in others and self

On the perception of aging in others and self

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Brian E” notes:

I hope our perceptions of age become skewed, otherwise I’m going crazy. I’ve found myself seeing people that look exactly like the ones I knew from 30-40 years ago. Only it’s not them. I’ve had to remind myself it can’t be them, because they would look as old as I do if it was them.

Yes, yes, and yes! I experience this on a regular basis, complete with the awareness that it can’t be them. My hunch is that although we are all unique – yes, even identical twins – there nevertheless is a finite number of general “looks” for faces and that’s what we’re seeing – a variation on one of those themes.

In addition, some people change a great deal over time and become nearly unrecognizable. Sometimes it’s about weight gain and/or illness, but often it’s just sag and wrinkle and droopy eyelids. And yet there are others who defy time and look not just younger than the rest of the people their age, but very much like their younger selves with just a few droops here and there. It’s uncanny. I noticed it at my 50th (yes, 50th) high school reunion in particular – the variance in the rate of aging was phenomenal given that we were all roughly the same age.

And the board with the photos of the deceased was getting uncomfortably full.

Then there’s this observation by commenter “AesopFan”:

All of the pictures on our walls are of our family from at least 20 years ago or more, and sometimes when the boys are here, especially the ones I see infrequently, I have to consciously tell myself that all those pudgy, balding, and sometimes bearded old men were my little boys.

That reminds me of my mother’s reaction when my brother started to lose some hair (he’s not bald yet; just receding at a slow pace) and I went gray; she was somewhat dismayed. “Oh, no!” she said. I was a bit miffed, but I realized she was thinking of her own advancing age more than ours. Our appearance was just a reminder of the passage of time.

And then there was my own experience when I had cataract surgery:

A day or two after my cataract surgery I was looking at a relative and noticed he looked older. There were lines in his face I’d never seen before. It was alarming, because at first I thought there had been a sudden and abrupt aging process. But then I realized that it was just that I was seeing more clearly the details I hadn’t seen before, like when HDTV first came out.

Then the same thing happened with my own face in the mirror.

Initially I had figured it was because the surgery had been stressful. Then I thought it was because I wasn’t wearing eye makeup. Then I decided it was the extra-bright lighting in the bathroom that I was using as a guest.

Then I closed my left eye – the one with the new lens in it – and looked at myself in the mirror with my right eye. The lines disappeared, and I looked the way I had thought I looked all these years. Soft focus, lines blurred or erased.

Oh, well. It’s a small price to pay to be able to see better. But a disconcerting one.

I’m used to the sight of my own face in the mirror now. But if I ever want to go back in time, all I have to do is close my left eye, and the lines soften instantly when looking through the cataract in my right eye. A time machine!

Comments

On the perception of aging in others and self — 35 Comments

  1. From the title, I thought you were going to how we see others aging more than ourselves. I see most people in my age range (mid-60s) as looking older than I think I look, but that’s probably partly an illusion. On the other hand, I happened to see a photo of Caroline Kennedy dissing her cousin RFK Jr. She’s only a couple of years older than I am but looks about 90 (except for having nice Kennedyesque hair).

  2. The vision effect can be worse than loss of resolution with age from cataracts, illness that effects the retina can cause “fun house mirror”
    distotions to what you see. My wife has a serious case in one eye and I have milder distortion in one eye. Different diseases that got our retinas. Bad luck in the gene pool lottery.

  3. Neo, it’s nice to know I’m not going crazy!

    That instance where my brain kicks in with reality that it can’t be those people from years ago is somewhat similar other situations where we are in a state of conscious unawareness, or unaware consciousness.

    My oldest sister has disable the bluetooth in her car, so she can’t use her phone. She’s afraid that her attention while talking on the phone might make her unaware of possible emergency situations on the road.

    I know what she is describing. When talking on the phone, I’ll notice that I’ve gone several blocks without being aware of it. I assume that if something happened on the road that required me to take action, I would do that. But should I rely on that assumption? I don’t really know because it’s never happened.

    As to how I see myself, when I look in the mirror, I still see myself with blond hair with gray streaks– yet I know from pictures of myself that my hair is completely gray.

    “But if I ever want to go back in time, all I have to do is close my left eye, and the lines soften instantly when looking through the cataract in my right eye. A time machine!”

    Maybe you could have the ophthalmologist perform surgery to make the left eye the same as your right eye. Presto. No plastic surgery required!

  5. Grey? Give me a break. I am White haired. Got it from my Mom’s side of the family. Of course, I am 78 (God, is that Old?). Started going Grey/White in my 30’s. As I get older I see more of my Dad and his Dad in my face. I don’t think I look 78. I do have to say that some are surprised that I am that age, saying I look younger, in my 60’s. Ha! Lines and Wrinkles I have in abundance. Maybe they were saying that to be nice?

  6. A few days ago in the café I was chatting, as he and I do, with a lovely silver-haired prof from UNM. He mentioned in passing that he was born in 1956.

    I was born in 1952, i.e. I’m four years older. Yet, when we talk, I feel like I’m in my 20s, addressing an elder.

    Well, I never really grew up.

  7. Garrison Keillor on “Prairie Home Companion,” before he became insufferable, did a “Lake Wobegon” monologue on visiting an old high school friend a few decades later and being dismayed how his friend had gained weight and looked so adult and so old.

    Keillor remarked that his friend’s 20-ish son looked more like the kind of guy Keillor imagined he would hang out with.

    I know my birthdate and I can do the math, but no way am I 72 years-old! 🙂

    I mean, I know I am, but that’s not how I think of myself. As Clint Eastwood said and Toby Keith wrote the song:

    –Toby Keith, “Don’t Let the Old Man In”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxsNGXoGVok

  8. One of the things I loved about covering the Eye Center the past decade was that the guys would flirt with me. Through their cataracts, I was still young and cute.
    (I skipped my 50th Hs reunion last year, so I am not young. And “formerly cute” at best.)

    My mother had a harder time with my (her eldest’s) 65th birthday than I did.

  10. You didn’t get the surgery in both eyes? I thought that was the usual situation with cataracts, with a period of healing time between the two procedures. When I was being driven home after the first eye was done, I did the right eye/left eye thing. With the eye that had been done first, the snow was beautiful and white. With the yet to be done eye, the snow on the ground looked dirty as if it had been along the road for days.

  11. Jimmy, I noticed that about Caroline Kennedy a few years ago! I think she’s a bit younger than I am (yes, I just checked; she’s a year younger), and, though of course I probably see myself differently than others do, she looks 30 years older!

    I think it runs in the family, though. None of them seems to age well.

  12. I am eating at a McDonald’s right now. As I was getting my order I saw a man that looked very much how the father of one of my high school friends did years ago. The man has been dead for two or three years now.

    I have developed in my mid 50s what my paternal side of the family called “The Lee Flop” where the skin above the eye drops down and rest on the eyelid. Especially on my right eye when I am tired. It can make the older men in my family look somewhat Asian, although our heritage is European and maybe a bit of gypsy.

  13. How people perceive your age is not just your physical appearance, but your demeanor and attitude as well. My wife and I are both in our late 60s, but we both have a lot of energy and are positive and outgoing, which (I think) contributes to people supposing that we’re younger than the calendar says. Also, I started losing my hair when I was in my 30s, and I finally just said “screw it” and began shaving my head. A lot of younger guys around here (Boise, ID) do that, so I suppose that could be a contributing factor.

  14. Isn’t it interesting how our brain will adjust for deficiencies in one eye by priortizing input from the other? I had a temporary condition of tiny bubbles in the retina at the focus point. The bubbles swelled the retina just the tiniest bit, but enough to cause focus problems.

    My brain compensated, and the only way to tell was to cover the good eye and see what the problem eye really saw.

  15. gwynmir:

    And no one but Caroline in her family of origin got to age much at all. Her father was assassinated at 46, her brother died in a plane crash at 38, and even her mother died at 63 and didn’t look very old. Caroline is now 66.

  16. jrod:

    It is indeed usual but in my case it is not recommended at present. Maybe never. I wrote a multi-part series on my eye surgery and the situation with my eyes, but the summary version relevant to having my other eye done is here and also here.

  17. I forgot to mention that about 5 years ago I visited an old friend in NY. I’d seen her in recent years, but hadn’t seen her in perhaps 5 years at the time, so I pretty much knew what she looked like as a woman my age. She looked good for her age, but of course not as she had when we were young.

    Her daughter, about 30, answered the door. She looked almost exactly as her mother had at the age of 30; it was uncanny and disorienting and it took me a while to accept the fact that she wasn’t my old friend and that the somewhat older woman in the background was indeed my old friend.

  19. What’s that saying, Getting old is terrible but it sure beats the alternative.

    The most annoying thing to me is that any time I look into a mirror I see my father staring back at me. 😉

  23. I was curious about some family friends who had moved away 70 years ago. They maintained contact with my parents with photos and Christmas cards & letters for decades, until my parents died in the ’80s. I recently did an Internet search and found an obituary for the paterfamilias, who died in 1993. From the obituary I did an Internet search for his daughter, who was friends with my sister before they moved away. She is a grandmother still working in an interesting job, and I was struck how much her recent photo resembled what I remembered of her photos from 60-70 years ago. Her face was a little bit fuller than when she was a child, but what the heck.

    When we were kids, I didn’t think my cousin looked like her mother, neither in facial structure nor in coloring. She was blonde and her mother was brunette. Her mother had high cheekbones reflecting her 1/8 Indian/Native American ancestry. As my cousin has matured (sounds better than aged) her cheekbones have become more prominent, so now she very much resembles her mother.

    My brother looks very much like one of our great-grandfathers (1851-1945).

  24. As a really elderly person who didn’t show age for a very long time, I still feel 60 or so inside, but the mirror says, nope, you are 88. And how in the world did that happen? BTW, I do have an identical twin, she used to be 5 minutes older but now I would swear she is 10 years younger.
    We live in a town with many retirees. Often my husband and I see these poor elderly old folks at the grocery store and sadly it is true many of them are far worse off that we are and at least 10 years younger. We have been truly blessed.

  25. neo:

    I thought neovascularization was named after you! (NOT!) :0

    Actually that is one of the causes of one type of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The “wet” type IIRC.

    Not what my spouse has.

  26. @ Gringo > “My brother looks very much like one of our great-grandfathers (1851-1945).”

    Sometimes family resemblances can be spooky.
    (1) As one of our sons aged (before he got too pudgy!), it became apparent that he was a near-clone of my father, although he hadn’t seemed that similar to daddy’s childhood pictures.
    (2) At my mother’s funeral, when her 10-years-younger sister paid her respects at the open casket, Aunt P. said in some surprise, “I never realized that she looked just like Granny G.!”

    @ Ruth H > “As a really elderly person who didn’t show age for a very long time,’

    You are in a lucky minority! I was talking Sunday to a friend about her recent birthday and she remarked that she had turned 80, which I didn’t know. I had always thought she looked to be the same age as myself, in the early 70s.

  27. Sgt.+Joe+Friday said: How people perceive your age is not just your physical appearance, but your demeanor and attitude as well.

    I think there’s a great deal in this. I am 70 and my skin definitely looks it — mostly the result of genetics, plus youthful recklessness about sun exposure. But l’m often told that I look young for my years. After a recent doctor visit, I checked the clinical notes in my medical records portal and was tickled pink to discover that the doctor had written that I appeared much younger than my stated age!

    I promise you, it’s not my face. It’s got to be attitude, energy, and genetic luck that has so far kept me mostly free of chronic health issues. But I’ll take it!

  28. When I started grad school, I was amazed that the undergrads all looked like they were high schoolers. Age is relative that way.

    People who look younger than their age for decades may have that depressing moment when all of a sudden they look their real age, or older. There also may be the disconcerting Benjamin Button period when one looks both very old and very young.

    Caroline Kennedy’s aunts didn’t age very well either. Neither have her female cousins (Kerry Kennedy, Rory Kennedy, Maria Shriver). How much is aging badly and how much is losing the bloom of youth on features that were there all along is hard to say.

  29. A few years ago I ran into an old friend from grad school, whom I hadn’t seen for maybe 40 years. He had gone totally bald, and was much heavier. When I got home, I rummaged through a shoe box of photos, and found one of him, slim with long curly dark hair. So, I put it in the mail to him. He wrote back to thank me, and commented, “But my kids refuse to believe it’s really me!”

    When I was much younger, I was cursed with a sort of baby face that made me look younger than I really was. I got carded regularly into my mid- to late-twenties. It sometimes made it hard to be taken seriously. But my looks gradually caught up with my age, and now I think I look every bit my real age.

  34. I personally look about the same at 56 as I did at 26 with a little gray at the temples. I’d like to say it is good nutrition and exercise, but my father, mother and their siblings all aged quite well until they got very very old into their 80s, so I think it is genetics. My old man had a full head of hair and looked in his 60s until aggressive cancer took him out in 4 months at 87.

    My personal observation is aging is a step function – you grow old all at once. My bachelor neighbor way back was a swinging 60s guy bringing home 40 year old divorcees. One day I look out at he is hobbling along hunched over a walker with a hump in his back. This is totally serious, it was like he aged 20 years in a day.

  35. Neo: yes, I was wondering what Caroline’s brother John would look like now (JFK, too).

    whatever: I, too, seem to have been blessed with decently good genes in the aging department. My mom is almost 90 and her face is still relatively unlined; she looks perhaps 15-20 years younger.

    My brother is 70 and doesn’t look it, either. Who knows, though, perhaps we’ll age in a day like your neighbor.

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