Age isn’t just a number, it’s more of an Insta filter
The ‘how old do I look?’ app is a sad statement on our self-image and social media, writes Sarah Caden
‘YASSSSS,” wrote Amanda Holden, by way of a caption on an Instagram post last week.
She’d just used the app’s “how old do I look?” filter, and it had assessed the shape of her face, position of her features and various dimensions to conclude that Amanda Holden is 35.
Amanda Holden is actually 48.
Her celebratory caption showed just how happy she was to have 13 years wiped off her actual age.
Elsewhere, Cheryl — nee Tweedy, that Cheryl — tried the filter, too. It arrived at 47 years of age. Cheryl is in fact 36, and didn’t look best pleased about its assessment. Of course, posting her shocked face deliberately demonstrated some sense of humour and pointed out that it’s a fallible device, but still, even the urge to know what an algorithm thinks of how you’re ageing says so much about where we’re at.
And very little of it is good.
Of course, cynically, you could point out that all of these filters are just sly exercises in gathering more and more data. And they are, but the really sinister thing is how the tech minds understand the extent to which we are at the mercy of our very modern vanity.
They know that vanity will get the better of our mistrust of tech every time. They know that if an app will tell us we look younger than we are, then we’d hand over any detail they want to achieve that result.
And then tell everyone, obviously, as information like that has no value kept to yourself. Is anything best kept to yourself these days?
The “how old do I look?” filter says a lot about our relationship with social media, obviously, but also how we feel about age as the enemy. Amanda Holden was reported as “celebrating” the result she got on the Instagram app last week. She’s a winner and this is war.
There’s something very deflating about this as the general attitude and it is a general attitude, that not only is it important to look younger than you are, but that there is some sense of victory in this. And it is a general attitude, which is not about looking good or even good for your age — which is a massive insult — but looking younger than your true years.
The knock-on effect of which is that if you look your age, it’s a disaster. And yet, most of us look our age.
If we don’t, we look close enough to our age, and if we look markedly younger than our age, chances are there is massive effort being put into that. Maybe even massive money. Maybe far too much of both for it to be healthy for your head, because it’s a war that one will ultimately lose, right? We’re all only going one direction, and no one says we have to do it being dowdy or downtrodden or doing nothing to look our best, but this pressure to do the impossible and hold back time is ultimately a losing battle.
But it only feels like losing if you set up a mentality where an app telling you that you look 11 years younger is a cause for celebration.
Funnily enough, this time last year, celebs — including the aforementioned Cheryl — were caught up in the #10yearchallenge, which went as viral as this year’s “how old do I look?”.
The #10yearchallenge saw people upload a picture of themselves 10 years earlier, alongside a current one. Then, fast and furious, came the responses to the posts.
“Oh my god, you haven’t changed a bit.”
“You look exactly the same.”
“You look even better.” And so on. Lots of people made fun of their old hairdos and clothes, but the affirmation that was sought — and given, quid quo pro — was that everyone was cheating time and winning the war. The years had made no mark on anyone, it seemed. And everyone was app happy.
God forbid the app would make anyone unhappy. Well, other than giving everyone an appetite for approval that is increasingly impossible to satisfy.
And, as singer and actress Selena Gomez lamented last week, creating a culture where everyone feels the pressure to look the same. This enforced conformity, fed by social media, is warping her generation, she complained, and she makes a good point.
The “how old do I look?” app gave her an age of 21, while Gomez is really 27.
What she cannot know yet, however, is how older generations — and particularly women — are prey to the same pressure.
There is now an accepted ideal appearance for older women, and it’s the hypersmooth skin and remarkably rounded features of women like Amanda Holden. Regular signs of age — lines, wrinkles, loss of firmness and radiance, loss of fullness in cheeks and lips — are signs of defeat and yet, most of us cannot avoid them.
Further, it seems that the closer celebrity women get to the age of menopause, the more there is a desire to seem to be cheating nature.
The pressure is intense to appear as if it is possible to trick it into having zero physical effect whatsoever. I have no idea where Amanda Holden is in relation to perimenopause or menopause, but that delight in looking 36 says so much about our deep cultural aversion to female middle age.
“How old do I look?” gave 50-year-old Jennifer Aniston an age of 40.
Take a look at 50-yearold Jennifer Lopez at last week’s Superbowl in the
US, all line-free skin, tumbling hair and toned muscles.
Not one bit of her giving in to gravity — which we regard as another defeat. We bandy around “gravity-defying” as if it’s both achievable and an achievement that indicates superhero superiority.
Cheryl, once she’d been told she had the face of 47-year-old, then went scrambling around for other defining filters. She tested which Disney and Pixar characters she might be, and found that she most resembled Hades from Hercules and the ancient Mama Coco from Coco. She wasn’t thrilled.
But she told us anyway. And, obviously, everyone offered the affirmation that the filter, this time, was wrong.
‘The tech minds know how much we are at the mercy of our vanity’