Nobody Cares About How Young You Look

And if you are over 30, I don't believe you "look 12."

I never would have known this was a “thing” if not for social media, but lately I’ve been inundated with videos, articles and posts about how Gen Z looks old, especially compared to the vivacious, dewy millennials. When this content is created on independent platforms or on social media (as opposed to mainstream news—and yes, it’s been covered in the mainstream news) it always seems to start with a land acknowledgement ritual of sorts: the author or OP (almost always a millennial) begins by addressing how young they look in comparison to their Gen Z counterparts.

It’s almost a disclaimer: they’re about to call someone else old-looking, so they must set the record straight that they don’t look old, for some reason. They don’t always claim to look nineteen, or anything crazy. In fact, they might attempt to be self-deprecating and say, “Of course I don’t look like a teenager—I am hashtag old—but there’s NO WAY I look ten years older than this random twenty-five-year-old, who looks as decrepit as Prince Philip in his current state.” It’s the most bizarre form of ageism—one against aging, but directed at young people by relatively older people.

I don’t actually think Gen Z looks old. Yes, you can cherrypick a few influencers who have gone ham on the injectables (and they do, in fact, look old) but most Gen Z people don’t look like that. Most do not get injectables, and probably won’t until someone invents DoorDash for Botox.

I think this misperception is twofold. First, a lot of people my age (35) don’t actually know or see that many younger people, so their view of Gen Z is built mostly from the aforementioned puffy influencers and TikTok fashion girlies who have ironic Princess Diana haircuts. Second, I think millennials are projecting how they imagine themselves to look, and contrasting that with how Gen Z looks—it’s not that the younger generation looks ancient, but that they look “the same age as us.” But…do they? It’s kind of like the reverse of how when you were a freshman in high school, the seniors looked really cool and mature, but by the time you were a senior, seniors just kind of looked like normal teenagers. Maybe it’s our perceptions of ourselves that are the problem, not Gen Z.

A lot of millennials operate in a distorted reality where they look (or, in fact, are) twenty-seven. Ergo, they will notice a bizarre disconnect between how old they look (or how old they think they look) compared to people who actually are twenty-seven. Thinking themselves to look younger than they are, they see someone who is that age and conclude they look the same age, ergo, the other person is aging badly. I mentioned this on Twitter and a follower sent me a video wherein a Gen Z influencer’s age was estimated as “the same as me, 43” by a woman who looked decades older than her.

I know what you’re saying—CHH, you bitter hag! I’ll have you know, everyone I meet thinks I’m half my age. It’s actually really annoying! I can’t go anywhere without the police dragging me to the nearest middle school!