About every 6 months this picture of Alexa Chung crosses my timeline and I have to immediately repost it to my Instagram story. I always get a handful of women my age that respond with how much this picture, which seems incredibly simply in nature, has always been a vibe for them. It’s an extremely Millennial photo and one that has been permanently seared into my brain. It also grounds me that despite my age starting to tick up, I don’t need to be inhibited by both my age and current trends.
I never understood why growing up my mom always told me she never felt her true age. She always aged herself somewhere between 25 and 35, but never even close to the age that she adopted me (which was 39). Recently at the age of 75 my mom has finally admitted she is in her golden years but only physically- never mentally. This was always weird to me because as a teenager and person in their twenties, how could I feel anything but my age and wanting to be older? But now on the heels of my 37th birthday I completely understand her point of view. I don’t feel 36 at all but I do feel an age younger than what’s on my birth certificate.
This has become a mutual feeling with a lot of my close friends as well- we’re all firmly in our thirties and none of us feel like that is an appropriate age. One day I was nannying and referenced myself as a girl to the 6 year old I take care of and without a beat he looked at me and said “you’re not a girl, you’re a woman.” I was taken aback because although I’ve had my share of pap smears as an adult woman, being read as one felt completely different. I wanted to look at him and say “what about me makes you think I’m a woman? Kid, I just googled ‘vanguard account’ two weeks ago” but before I could say anything he was already running in a different direction after tagging and calling me “it!!!”
Jennifer Senior wrote this article for The Atlantic in which she touches on this exact sentiment- why is the age you feel nowhere near the age you actually are? It varies of course for different people, some skew older and some younger for various life reasons, but mostly no one feels aptly their age. We are all stuck in a year that betrays the one we came to this planet. She writes:
I’m 53 in real life but suspended at 36 in my head, and if I stop my brain from doing its usual Tilt-A-Whirl for long enough, I land on the same explanation: At 36, I knew the broad contours of my life, but hadn’t yet filled them in. I was professionally established, but still brimmed with potential. I was paired off with my husband, but not yet lost in the marshes of a long marriage (and, okay, not yet a tiresome fishwife). I was soon to be pregnant, but not yet a mother fretting about eating habits, screen habits, study habits, the brutal folkways of adolescents, the porn merchants of the internet.
The age you feel is known scientifically as your “subjective age.” For the last 5-6 years I would say my subjective age fell in the range of 27-31 and now I would say that it’s actually much closer to 32. Maybe because those years were some of my hardest to trudge through but also because with age you want some respect for where you’ve been and what you’ve done. I want to be my correct age solely because I know people have dismissed me as being younger with more life ahead. I don’t disagree that I am still young(ish) with lots of life ahead but I am closing the gap on 40 which also means that we gotta get things moving along soon. I’ve earned my years for a reason and being told I still have time because people tend to think I’m 5 years to a full decade younger than what I am feels like a betrayal of all those years I have cried and had to haul ass through. But I will stress that I do not take for granted that I present young and if I never meet them, the genes my birth parents passed on to me were a wonderful parting gift. So maybe I will take the dismissals if it ultimately saves me on Botox.
I love my little life right now but most times I feel bad that I think I’m too old for it. I have a nice apartment styled exactly the way I want it, my personal style has come into it’s own and the relationships that fill up my days have made me happier than ever. I feel like I’ve finally settled into myself, knowing my likes and dislikes, when to say yes and when to say no and yet many times I get worried that my life seems immature. That because I am still fighting for a career and haven’t married yet, that I haven’t earned my age. Which I know is not true but every so often I’ll put back a shirt because it ages me down even though I would wear the hell out of it. I’ll say no to a late night or event because I’m supposed to be too old for that, even though I still have some energy kicking around in there. But I also would love to flip the script on age- show that a person heading to 40 can still wear that shirt, be out that late and even every so often say yes to something that will surely have them recuperating for 2-3 days.
Back to why this picture of Alexa Chung means so much to me (really any picture that graces my timeline of her). Alexa was my tumblr icon in my twenties, anything she wore I tried to recreate. I’ll never forget when I found a pair of Alexa Chung for Madewell black shorts at Crossroads and couldn’t get it to the cash register fast enough for me to purchase. There’s a very specific moment when I was 28 where I was standing outside of La Cita on Sunset Blvd wearing those shorts with a cigarette tucked behind my ear and hula hooping after a friend’s birthday (because of course someone brought a hula hoop). I remember very contently realizing in that moment that I was “still very young” and was excited for the future ahead. This memory is so clear to me and was so grounding at the time, because back then 28 might as well have been 42 in my brain but wearing that outfit and being out and stupid reminded me my youth was hanging on. I still have those shorts despite them fitting a little off these days but I will never ever give them up. They represent so much for me and I will surely force them into heirloom status one day.
That picture of Alexa reminds me of both that 28 year old girl and the 36 year old I am today. It is the closest thing that doesn’t feel that far from the girl who was hula hooping. It’s a style that is still fresh but also aged, and so simple to the naked eye but everyone my age who sees it can lock into that feeling of safety within their age. It’s a nod to our youth but it’s not completely giving up. There’s a creative nature behind it that says “I’m here to party… till 10pm :)” which is my ideal night. I never want to limit myself because of my age but I also want to age with some youth still intact. I still want to live in a world where despite my back hurting more these days, it doesn’t completely stop me from trying new experiences. I know I still have lots of lessons to learn and mistakes to make, and the thought of stagnating my life in order to appease my age feels wildly gross.
This is why my subjective age can’t be 17 or 23 (ages I was still very much associated with the church), or 25, 29, 31 (ages where I felt like I was throwing everything at the wall to see what actually made me feel me). I definitely do not feel almost 40 which my friends hate when I say that out loud but I do feel like I’ve lived a life of an almost 40 year old. I joke around my youthful glow comes from never having a serious relationship but I also think it’s because I do want to live my life without the boundaries of a birth year. I’ll wear the mini skirt and blue eyeshadow just like the other 23 year olds but with more confidence of who I am at the end of the night. I don’t feel as scared or lonely as I did in my twenties but I also still feel young enough to have a curiosity about what’s still out there.
some fun new happenings at lizardbreath:
My newsletter is going weekly! I’ll be doing two newsletters a month where I touch on personal topics (like the one above) and then two a month that will be like last week’s rec newsletter. The rec newsletters will be for paid subscribers only, but free subscribers will still get access to the first 5 recs. If you would like to be a paid subscriber, you can change your subscription below. Also in the works is an audio newsletter that will start coming out in September. Thank you again for reading and being apart of my journey to figuring out this little newsletter!