Guessing someone's age
February 1, 2006 7:40 PM   Subscribe

What are some of the techniques to guess more accurately someone's age?
posted by Sharcho to Society & Culture (19 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
hair style? hair color? hair quantity?
posted by brandz at 7:43 PM on February 1, 2006


For women, the hands are usually a dead giveaway.
posted by cosmicbandito at 7:46 PM on February 1, 2006


I assume you mean on appearance as opposed to clues gleaned from conversation.

I'm not very good judging ages, but I've been told that for guessing a woman's age you should look at her hands because makeup may conceal facial clues.

On preview, that's a second for cosmicbandito's point.
posted by justkevin at 7:52 PM on February 1, 2006


I seem to recall that bouncers do it by looking at (and maybe in) your eyes.
posted by jjg at 7:59 PM on February 1, 2006


The blind leading the blind:

Friends. If someone is in the child-to-24 range, their friends tend to be of a very close age to themselves, so even if you can't work out someone's age (they're wearing makeup, or they just have one of those ageless faces), then looking at the age of the people they are talking too can nail it.

Being wary of the misdirections helps too. Probably nothing you're not already well aware of, but:
- Make-up is a huge wildcard to me, it's obviosuly used by young people to look older (as in, to make a 15-year-old look like 20's), and older people look younger. (40's look 30's), but the effects can vary.
- Depending on where you are, it may be common for elderly people to dye their hair natural colours (brown, etc), which tends to look younger someone who IS younger but doesn't. That also throws me.
- Facial hair - unless it's the campus goatee phase, a (proper) beard in the 20s and 30s tends to make someone look older than they are (or clean shaven makes them look younger if you like :) A beard on someone older can have the opposite effect.


Nothing really insightful though, sorry.
posted by -harlequin- at 8:00 PM on February 1, 2006


The neck can be another giveaway.
posted by Airhen at 8:11 PM on February 1, 2006


I second Airhen. As people age, the skin on and around their neck begins to wrinkle heavily and sag. Check it out when you watch the Oscars this year. The older starlettes will appear in their 20s or 30s, but their neck will tell a much different story.
posted by bjork24 at 9:01 PM on February 1, 2006


You can practice on a site I put together awhile back. It's linked on my profile.
posted by the jam at 9:09 PM on February 1, 2006


Think like Sherlock Holmes. You examine all the exterior details you can pick out, then deduce what you can. Hands are a good place to start, wrinkles around the eyes are generally the first signs of aging, the clothes they wear can be very informative, or even the way they wear their hair. Hearing them talk can also help. Try to establish a baseline - go to a mall and watch people. If you feel certain about someones age (i.e. "she is obviously in high school"), then glean what details you can about the way she is dressed. Do this enough and you start to see trends.

I'd say it would be tough to guess more accurately than within about five years, but I think five years is doable. I'm not saying I'm great at this stuff, but everybody needs a hobby.

Actually, the creepiest thing about this stuff is that I was introduced to it while working as a sales person. The company I worked for flew me across the country to a seminar where they taught us techniques on how to manipulate people into buying stuff. That was when I knew I wasn't a born sales person. But the first thing to do was to observe the person's mannerisms and appearance to figure out how to con them.
posted by tcobretti at 9:10 PM on February 1, 2006


Oh, yeah, I agree the hands can be a giveaway. First the veins start popping out all over, then the spots come in. Feh. Older feet get veiny, too.

Necks get crepey, but another neck rule of thumb is to count the rings -- e.g. number of rings +1 = decade, where people in their 40s have three neck rings. I wouldn't put too much stock in that as I've seen 40 year olds with only a single neck ring, but it is a trend.

Vertical lines on the upper lip are associated with age, but can be brought on prematurely by smoking.

If you know someone's a smoker or a sun worshipper, you may want to drop 5-10 years off their apparent age. Smoke and UV are hell on skin.
posted by rosemere at 9:15 PM on February 1, 2006


The Age Project, referred to by the jam, is a fantastic website and great practice for this sort of thing. (Mefi thread)
posted by Saucy Intruder at 9:27 PM on February 1, 2006


It's not possible. I mean it might be possible to come up with a rule of thumb that would work on a lot of people, and not work on a lot more. Some people just wear out faster.
posted by delmoi at 10:25 PM on February 1, 2006


Fair skinned people tend to age faster. Minorities, particularly people of African origin seem to hold up quite well. So if I'm guessing someone's age I take that into account i.e. I deduct a few years for the lilly whites and add a few years for the darker skinned folks.

My mate is Native American and in her early 40's (also petite, which seems to make people look younger), and most people are genuinely surprised to discover she's not in her late 20's or early 30's.

Also, one group that seem to defy rosemere's smoker/sun worshipper rule are prison inmates. You'd think with the stress, bad diet, and smoking (in a lot of cases) convicts would age faster, but I've noticed and read that people generally tend to age more slowly in the hoosegow. Obviously the limited sun exposure could have something to do with it, but one article I read attributed it mainly to not having any job-related stress. You'd think dodging shivs and prison gangs would be more stressful than 8 hours a day in a cubicle.
posted by Devils Slide at 2:27 AM on February 2, 2006


For women, the hands are usually a dead giveaway.

cosmicbandito is right on the money. women also tend to be more likely to know zodiacy type stuff, so it is a lot easier to get their chinese zodiac sign out of them than their age or the year they were born. same thing, really.
posted by bryak at 3:11 AM on February 2, 2006


Physical characteristics can be very deceiving, I would hesitate to guess based on them. Unless you are guessing a 20+ year difference, then it will be a very wild guess. For example, a 20-yr old isn't too much different than a 30-yr old person in most cases. High school kids vary widely. Some look like they are much younger and some can already grow beards.

In most situations speech will be a greater gauge of age. You can't hide the generational difference in slang. If you are familiar with the local speech patterns, then I would be able to guess an accuracy of +/- 5-yrs. I think to guess more accurately by any method would require some supernatural means.
posted by JJ86 at 5:55 AM on February 2, 2006


For example, a 20-yr old isn't too much different than a 30-yr old person in most cases.

I know that a lot of people can't tell the difference between a twenty-year-old and a thirty-year-old, but it's always been fairly obvious to me. (Probably because I'm one of those early-thirties-mistaken-for-twenties people.) In those ten years, most people lose the last little bit of the baby fat in the sides of your face, and bodies start to shift. We women can wear all the push-up bras we want, but the fact is that breasts get a little lower over those ten years.

The Age Project was interesting, but a lot of those photos are not great quality or dark or not straightforward, and they don't show enough of the person.
posted by desuetude at 6:35 AM on February 2, 2006


Slice in half and count the rings ? :-)
posted by GreenTentacle at 7:47 AM on February 2, 2006


Definitely the eyes and hands.
Oh...and GreenTentacle's method works flawlessly. L

Gearing up for that summer job at the amusement park?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:37 AM on February 2, 2006


Heh. I KILL at amusement park guess-your-age booths. Got an awesome stuffed cow from the Erie Fair in 2004 after the guy underguessed me by 5 years.
posted by rosemere at 9:37 AM on February 2, 2006


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