To be devastated about this minor thing...

[Ninerina]

I went to a book club last night- all fine, enjoyed it- and they asked me who I live with and I said my husband and my son and they asked how old he is and when I said his age there were no gasps, no look of shock, just nods
I have always always always been told I don't look my age but now people just nod. What is this hell?!
I'm 55 and my son is 29.
Up until I turned 53 people would say I didn't look my age
I know it's not a big deal really but couldn't they have pretended to look shocked?
It's not a big ask is it?
So upset

But they could have thought you had him quite young and are actually a decade younger than you are.

And it IS important to some — maybe a lot of — people (although I stand by the OP being tongue in cheek). Just because it’s important to them doesn’t mean it has to be to you; nor does it mean they’re not allowed to find it important just because it’s not to you.

I think it just smacks of deliberately setting someone up to compliment you, leaning in and expecting it, then being upset no one took the bait. but I usually always get the compliment - maybe they are trying to be polite, because it seems like something you might say to a lady, particularly if she emphasises how old her son is and is clearly waiting eagerly for your reply.

I think you’ve put far too much stock in it over the years. You’re now holding part of your identity in other peoples perceiving you as younger, and you seek that validation.

Ah yes, those of us who face the inevitable with a bit of emotional maturity are all 'sour-faced miseries'. Righty ho.

Who has ever felt the strong emotion of shock about another person's age?

I can't fathom that at all, how do those people react to actual shocking events?

It's silly but I sort of get where you're coming from. I used to live in France in my 20s, and there was a definite shift when people stopped called me "miss" and switched to "madam". I saw it as a kind of rite of passage really. Now if someone calls me "miss" I think they are insincere and want something from me! 😂

I hear you!!
all through my 40s I got the gasps “didn’t think you were xyz… thought you were about blah blah blah” I noticed that reaction stopping in my very late 40s. I did not like the absence!

I have very young kids, I had them late, i think this has kept me on the move, and knocking around with mum’s five or six or ten years younger than me… the kids energy kept me moving…

perimenopause came and I put on weight. Game changer.
Weight is a b*tch.
losing it now, and I think I look younger again, flexible etc, I move like a younger person again!
you can get the GASP back!!

Joking or not, it's the expectation that people will interrupt their conversation to compliment you on your appearance that is jarring - the sense of entitlement.

It's a social nicety. Obviously, nobody is genuinely gasping with shock because nobody really cares that deeply about how old anyone else is.

It reminds me of being out in a bar once and I mentioned I had children to a gentleman who was speaking to me. He was shocked and said “No way, you do not look like you could possibly have had two children.” And even turned to someone beside him and said “would you believe that!? She looks amazing.”

I laughed along but I was also thinking.. I’m a curvaceous woman in her 30’s, with all the lumps bumps and sags. There’s nothing difficult to believe here. It’s just a bit of flattery. He was never genuinely shocked. Imagine then I was affronted when no one was shocked in future when I said I was a mother. How could they possibly think this body had birthed children?? I must have lost something, where are my people 😂

Oh I totally get you OP and I feel exactly the same. I got ID’d until recently (I’m late thirties) and it really stings now that I don’t get asked!

@BetterWithPockets

Of course it's important to some people.
Otherwise there wouldn't be a multi million pound industry pedalling cosmetic surgery and treatments such as botox to women who are seeking to look young, or at least younger, for as many years as they can.
An obsession with looking young is not compatible with good mental health for the simple reason it's fighting what is natural and inevitable.

This happened to my mum because she had a baby face. One day she realised people no longer commented on how young she looked. She blamed the menopause, it aged her looks.

The responses on this thread are hilarious. Sorry you've been met with such a humour failure OP.

A few years back, when I was 38, I went wedding dress shopping with my 31 year old sister. The woman in the wedding shop turned to me and said 'And is this mum?'

MUM???

I, apparently, looked like I had a 31 year old daughter.

I still look daggers at that shop every time I drive past it.

People have never said I look younger than I do, but recently a couple of men, out of the blue, asked me my age. I found that rather random. I posted about it and got a similar array of weird responses. I still don't know what prompted the sudden questions, but they've stopped now so whatever I was doing, I'm not doing it anymore.

When people express shock about this it’s usually not that you don’t look your age, but more that they expect people with children that age to be older.

In middle class areas where people have children in their late 30s they would assume to have a 29 year old son you would be mid - late 60s.

In a working class area / with older people, it would be perfectly usual to have a 29 year old at 55 (or even 5+ years younger) and so they wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

I understand, I'm one of your people. ❤️.

I used to get this all the time. Now I am working on my attitude to life to keep me young xx

I get the - oh you don’t look old enough to have a uni age child- all the time. I reply with the truth, I got knocked up early. Conversation moves swiftly on. It’s not a comment on my youthful good lucks but more so a judgement on my teen pregnancy. Worked out well for me in the end.

I'm 66. I started getting a regular prescription (I shall be taking them for life now) in December and was thoroughly pissed off not to be asked "Do you pay for your prescriptions?" for the first time.

So you had a child at 26 - you look your age.
if you had said your child was 40 or 5 you might have got a reaction.

When my female partner and I were house hunting 24 years ago, a bloke in one house asked her "Is this your mother?" about me.

She's two and a half years older than me...

It's not fair is it op, I'd have said "you're kidding, you don't look older than that yourself love".
My DH, each time he buys alcohol and someone has to authorise the sale, he without fail days do you want to see my id?
They don't even glance, just say no it's fine... he's 53 and greying.
Folks don't know how to be nice any longer

I get you op. For ages people have been shocked when finding out I'm in my 40's. Since I turned 45 not so much. I have undeniably gone through the 44 year old aging jump (which my mum warned me I would as it happened to her too), but it's another thing to have it confirmed this way!

I'm 47 and I have noticed (gradually) that no one expresses surprise when I say my age or my kids' ages, which used to always be the case until my mid 40s

And I'm fine with that. I don't look as young for my age as I used to, certainly not to the extent people would be that surprised by my age anymore.

At the end of the day, what do I need to look 'young' for? It's not like I'm a model or an actress where it's a career requirement. Everyone ages and eventually even most of us young-looking people don't look as young as we did.

My mum, bless her, still seems to think I look about 18, but I am the baby of the family!

Of course you can "get" tone from reading. That's why books aren't usually full of emojis (😉 for clarity). Yes, it can be more difficult to gauge it accurately, but I thought it was quite clear from the OP that she was being slightly light-hearted/tongue in cheek.

They may still have thought you looked younger than your age and that with a 29 year old son you therefore had him very young. So making dramatic comments on it would be very tactless as you may have had to say oh yes I was 17 when I had him or something like that, which you may be fine with talking about, but equally well might not be. So it doesn't clear up whether you look younger than your age or not but perhaps you were with a polite and considerate group of people not wanting to interrogate the personal life of someone they don't know very well. FWIW I always get told I look at least 10 years younger but I never believe people, I just assume they're being nice, I look my age to myself in the mirror.