This weekend Kylie Jenner said she was freaking out about turning 18. Because that's like totally-really-so-old, guys. 'I'm really scared of the day I tun 19, I really don't want to grow past 18,' she said in an interview this with Sunday Times' Style magazine to promote the new clothing range she's launched at Topshop with her sister Kendall. But why so scared about ageing, Kylie (let's ignore the fact that nothing about her suggests she's a mere 17 in the first place)? 'You see a picture and you've changed so much in a year, I've done so much, physically, and whatever.' Whether or not she was alluding to her lip fillers here, we don't know, but there's no escaping the fact that age vs achievement is the barometer upon which we all measure ourselves now.
Take the popularity of How Old is an app that guesses your age using a photo you upload - basically telling you how old you really look. Apart from the fact that the accuracy of the app is still pretty questionable (our news editor Sophie, 27, was pegged as 62 in one picture, and I've hopped from 32, my actual age, to 27 in the space of a couple of pictures) How Old is the jumping point for technology that in the future, could scan your face as you walk past a billboard and present you an advert they think you'll want, based on your age and gender. Or rather, based on how you look. Which is pretty sinister stuff.
And it's a natural progression for a society where we'll age-shame each other at the drop of a hat. Remember when last year Lorde was asked to get hers out because people refuse to believe the New Zealand singer's only 17?
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Basically, Lorde is so self-posessed, talented and cool, that people (on Twitter) have refused to believe that she was only 17 years old (she's 18 now). website The Hairpin, in response published a print-out of her birth registration details, stating that she was born in 1996. Which, for those of you who aren’t so quick with the maths, confirms that she was, at the time, 17.
So what’s everyone’s problem? And where’s the obsession with her age come from? Yes she does sometimes look older than 18 in some photos (equally, I’ve seen plenty of pictures of her where she looks about seven). And Lorde herself apparently let the big lying cat out of the bag herself during an interview with Rookie’s Tavi Gevinson when she said “The Virgin Suicides really resonated with me as a teenager […] I mean, I am still a teenager.” She also apparently introduced herself to Vanity Fairwith ‘Hi, I’m Ella, and I’m actually 45.” Reports that she may or may not have been joking here are unconfirmed.
But that still doesn’t explain the furor the whole thing has caused – when did age become such a big issue? Why would she lie about her age in the first place, and why would it matter? Is she too cool for a 17-year-old? Too successful? At what age would her level of talent and self-possession become acceptable? When she’s 21? 25? And are we really just incredulous, or are we jealous? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS.
Lorde’s an extreme example of what’s happening to us all now – age shaming has become the new fat shaming. It’s the status symbol by which we live or die, and, crucially, we never hit the right number. We refuse to take people who achieve success at a young age seriously, yet we scoff at those we deem to be too old.
In the past our age was demarked clearly by what was going on in our lives, now our lifestyles are increasingly fluid, and very little indicator of what year we were born in. Ten or 15 years ago, your early 20s were all about getting your first job and forging a career. Nowadays 19-year-olds are running their own businesses, and 27-year-olds are still doing unpaid internships. Buying houses, getting married and having babies happen later than ever, if at all (the average age of a first time buyer is now 35 – in the 1980s it was 28. By some estimates, the average deposit size in London for first time buyers will hit £100,000 by 2020. The 2011 census revealed that there were more single households in the UK than married couples with dependent children – I could go on).
If the How Old app has proved anything, it's how becoming increasingly difficult it's become to judge the age of any woman aged between 18 and 40. Lorde certainly doesn’t dress like a 17 year old – but then how many 17 year olds do? Incidentally, I’m now worrying about how old that makes me sound. With a good diet, a bit of exercise, judicious use of sunscreen and good genes, it’s hard to distinguish plenty of 35-year-olds from girls ten years younger. 40-year-old women buy their clothes from the same shops as their teenage counterparts, we all go to the same gigs, drink in the same bars, and possibly even snog the same boys (see: Harry Styles).
Our lives can’t be benchmarked against the traditional life stages (job, mortgage, marriage, babies) so instead we’re searching for that sweet spot of age versus experience versus achievement - what do we do for a living? How many countries have we visited? How much money are we earning? How many friends do we have? "Whenever we meet somebody, I like to know how old that they are, so I can compare how sucessful they are compared to me. If someone's younger than me, and is doing better, it sends be into a jealous rage," says Sarah, 25, who finds herself getting serious age envy on a regular basis.
So, like our weight, we lie about our age, and we accuse others of lying about theirs. When someone seems to have too much too young (i.e. more than us, and we're five years older), we accuse them of nepotism (remember when everyone realised that the Girls girls had semi-famous parents?), or we age shame people by demanding to see their birth certificates. Because that girl five years younger than you getting the promotion you were after? Or the precocious teen landing that book deal you've been thinking about since you were at school? She's a physical, living breathing emodiment of all the opportunities you haven't taken, work you haven't got round to yet, and all the shit you haven't done. And no-one wants to see that.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.