How old do you feel? Asking for a friend.

So apparently, it’s very common that if I ask you how old you feel, your answer will not correspond to your actual age.

There is scientific evidence for this and even though I love science, big fan, I won’t bore you with the details suffice to say someone did some studies and the gap between fact and feels exists.

We spoke about this on Mamamia Out Loud this week after I read an essay in the Atlantic called "The puzzling gap between how old you are and how old you think you are".

Journalist Jennifer Senior described asking her 76-year-old mother how old she felt and her mum immediately replying, "45" for reasons she couldn’t articulate nearly as fast.

Senior observes that this inability to match these two numbers is weird because it’s not like we FEEL taller or shorter than we are so why do we have so much trouble locating ourselves in time?

Of her own numbers, Senior 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. I was not yet on the gray turnpike of middle age, in other words."

Oh same. 

She also notes that when asked, most people feel around 20 per cent younger than they are and I thought this whole idea was silly until I was forced to identify how old I felt on the podcast and I blurted out "41".

And guess what? 20 per cent.

Except for people younger than 25 who usually say they feel older than they are. Which stacks up if you’ve ever been eye-rolled by a teenager.

There are different reasons for feeling a certain age and it’s not necessarily the age when you were most happy. They say that some people are frozen at the age when they experience a major trauma. Others are frozen at the age they become famous which is a different kind of trauma in a way.

I think this is why I found the question difficult to answer at first. For the exact reason that it’s puzzling.

Listen to Mia, Jessie and Holly discuss this on Mamamia Out Loud here. Post continues after audio.

I’m not sure what 51 is meant to feel like but I would by lying if I didn’t admit it was a number that shocks me every time I say it. So I guess I don’t feel whatever I suspect 51 feels like.

Or is it just vanity? That I have a mental picture of 51 and it doesn’t vibe with how I see myself or the image I want to project to the world.

And why 41? Was that my happiest time?

No. It’s not that I was most happy when I was 41, it’s more just… maybe it’s how I imagine I look? 41?

For women - and maybe for men - it can be a shock as you get older to look in the mirror sometimes or glimpse your reflection in a shop window and be startled by what you see. Almost like there’s been a glitch in the system.

Plus, there has been such a shift in what certain ages look like… a 51-year-old woman a generation or two ago was probably not wearing flouro trainers and cargo pants like I am while writing this. Because I’m not like a regular 51-year-old. I’m a cool 51-year-old.

Lol.

There’s no harm in feeling a different age to the one on your driver’s licence and most of the time you’re not even aware of it. Sometimes though, the gap smacks you in the face like when I went to a wedding and found myself on the ‘oldies’ table with the guests in their 60s instead of with my younger friends in their 30s.

Or when someone you work with mentions they were born in 2001. Or when you learn you’re going to become a grandmother.

You won’t be shocked to hear that the people who have the smallest age gap between facts and feelings are those who live in cultures where growing older is not seen as diminishing your value in society. In Africa, for example, the gap is smallest probably because elders are widely revered and respected.

In this culture, the one we live in and especially for women, aging is something to be horrified by and, well, if not avoided (because that means dead), at least ameliorated by looking younger than your age.

I’ve found myself thirsty for people to tell me I don’t look like I’m in my 50s or that I’m too young to be a grandmother.

Feminist icon, Gloria Steinem was once told by someone she looked far younger than her age which at the time, was 55. They were trying to give her a compliment.

"No I don’t," she countered. "This is what a 55-year-old woman looks like."

But what does a 55-year-old woman feel like? Asking for a friend.

Feature image: Supplied.

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