How old do I look?

A TikTok trend is making women feel (even more) insecure about aging.

Mar 19, 2024

Hi everyone! If you’ve been on TikTok in the past few weeks, then chances are you’ve come across a new trend that’s making women feel (even more) insecure about aging.

But first, here’s what else people are talking about on Diem:

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Single mom of 2 young kids. Recently divorced after my husbands affair with a girl 10 years younger. I’m disassociating from life. I love my children but I hate my life. How do I accept life as is?

When I was thirteen years old, I sent a question into an online advice column. “How can I make myself look older?” I asked, lamenting how my peers towered over me and had started developing in ways I hadn’t. I waited, marking my height against my closet door frame with a pencil, each millimeter gained a victory. Eventually, my question was published, along with an answer that told me to steer clear of certain patterns but, more importantly, to know that I was valid no matter how I looked.

Instead, I spent the next ten years dressing monochromatically and wishing, every day, that the rest of my body would catch up. In middle school I was too short, in high school too underdeveloped, in college too babyfaced. My 20s were a decade of waiting to resemble the slim, bright, bronzed, contoured women on my Instagram feed.

And then, 31 hit, and suddenly a new anxiety gripped me: I look too old. My foundation has started getting caught in the lines of my forehead, my concealer crinkling around my eyes. If I don’t wear it at all, however, I look haggard, covered in dark circles and acne scars I unsuccessfully try to convince myself no one will notice.

I don’t know if I would be thinking about any of this if it weren’t for TikTok. TikTok is a dicey place for body image on the best of days, but a new trend has made scrolling even more treacherous: Users are asking strangers how old they think they look. Not how old they are—how they look.

A trend like this has no positive outcome. No one is going to go viral for looking their age. Instead, it’s the people who look significantly younger or older than you would have guessed who are showing up on For You Pages—along with the judgement that goes with it.

It’s hard to say who’s at fault here. No one’s wrong (although maybe a little masochistic) for asking how old they look, the same way no one’s wrong for being honest. It’s the reactions that have made this trend problematic. No matter how progressive someone says they are, to be told you look younger than you are feels like a victory, and to look older than you are is a failure.

And when I say “older,” I don’t mean whatever age just popped into your head. I mean 36. Thirty-six is the age one user was given that caused them to publicly spiral, as if it was a death sentence and not the age a lot of regular thriving young people are. She desperately asked for advice on how to change her look, and I watched helplessly, knowing I had just spent over two decades doing the same to achieve the opposite—only to find, when visible proof of age actually arrived in the form of smile lines and crow’s feet, I immediately rejected it.

No one actually goes from “too young-looking” to “too old-looking” overnight. Not in the way I felt I had. In reality, I was aging at the same pace the entire time, and the fact that I never got it “right” is proof that how I looked was, and is, only ever in my head. I wanted to be mature but young, thin but full-bodied, experienced but also carefree. The ideal version of myself I was waiting for could never have actually existed.

But more importantly, someone’s attractiveness or worthiness is in no way connected to how many years they’ve lived. Age is an objective observation, not a value judgement. “Hot” at 50 may look different than “hot” at 25, but neither should be prioritized over the other. I don’t know who started the rumor that younger was better, but knowledge of the rumor is the only thing perpetuating it. I’ve never once looked at someone and thought, “This person is ugly because they are old.” For some reason, I only think it about myself.

I’m not going to fix centuries of biases in a single newsletter, but I can invite you to join me in the lifelong journey of unlearning them. “Body neutrality” is something I’ve had to grapple with when it comes to my weight, but the same thinking can be applied to my age. The truth is, I don’t need to feel anything about how I look at all—and I certainly don’t need to know what TikTok feels about me, either.

How are you thinking about aging? Have any body neutrality tips? Let’s chat on Diem.

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