I look 30, what's so wrong with that?

The pressure to look younger is inescapable, but we need to reframe the way we think about ageing.

- Caitemma Burke

There was a time not all that long ago (it was earlier this year), when I would have felt incredibly upset if someone told me I looked 30 years old. From my mid-20s onwards, I always wanted people to think I was younger than my biological age, in the same way I always wanted to fit back into the vintage denim miniskirt I thrashed in high school. A twisted glimmer of smugness would shoot through me whenever someone guessed my age as being younger than it actually was; it was the same toxic self-satisfaction I’d feel after shedding a few kilos and shimmying back into that skirt.

Somewhere near the tail end of my 20s, though, people stopped reacting with surprise and saying, “Oh, I thought you were younger than that!” when I told them my age, and instead, just accepted it at face value. At work the other day, I looked in the bathroom mirror and realised it was time to face reality: my visage and my biological age were perfectly in sync. Religious retinol and sunscreen use would only get me so far— sure, they could improve my skin’s quality and health, but they couldn’t eradicate the ever-growing collection of laugh lines, eye bags, and deep-set forehead wrinkles. If I wanted to look younger than 30, I’d need to do what so many women in their 20s and 30s were doing—cosmetic interventions, namely Botox.