What Should a 30-Something Look Like?

We all know it can be nicer to live without brutal honesty, yet all over my “For You” page this year, I watched TikToker after TikToker ask their followers, “How old do I look?” Almost all of them were roundly humbled; 20- and 30-somethings suddenly saw decades tacked on to their age, whether because their foreheads didn’t move or moved too much, because they didn’t wear makeup or didn’t wear the “right” makeup, or because they colored their hair or let it go gray. What made one person look younger in certain eyes rocketed them to middle age and beyond in others. This turned out to be the first of many signs that, in 2024, no one seemed to know how old millennials should look.

Age confusion kept on hijacking TikTok. In a viral video from earlier this year, a 38-year-old presents a series of time-stamped cast photos as proof of concept: everyone on Cheers, ages 21 to 35, boasting hairlines several decades their senior; Jason Alexander, a youthful but balding 29 when he took the role of 31-year-old George Costanza on Seinfeld. But sometimes, the revelation that celebrities generally looked older in the 1980s and ’90s than they do now seemed to stir up as much surprise as the realization that young stars today look … young. Miley Cyrus was praised for “aging like fine wine” at the still youthful age of 31, and in early November, a fan remarked that Carrie Coon looked simultaneously 35 and 55 — “fine as hell” but also “old and young at the same time.” (She’s actually 43, she pointed out in her response). When Nicola Coughlan’s fans discovered that the Irish actor — most famous for playing teenagers on TV, to be fair — is actually 37, the revelation landed with the thud of a million dropped jaws. This, the collective shock implied, was not what a 37-year-old is supposed to look like.

But millennials — not just celebrities but real people, too — really do seem to be aging more slowly. Compared with those of 30 years ago, “I do think people look younger and look better,” says Dr. Karyn Grossman, a board-certified cosmetic surgeon and dermatologist to stars such as Gwyneth Paltrow (who at 52 is about the same age Rue McClanahan is supposed to be on The Golden Girls; it’s not just the 30-somethings). In Grossman’s opinion, that shift is partially due to better awareness about the two lifestyle factors that can dramatically escalate aging: sun exposure and cigarettes. One sobering study attributed 80 percent of facial aging signs in Caucasian skin to UV radiation. Similarly, the chemicals in cigarette smoke break down collagen and damage skin cells for a wrinklier, rougher, less even appearance. In the past 20 years, smoking rates in the U.S. have steadily declined while the use of daily sunscreen has marginally improved. But what really changed during that time is the number of anti-aging options available.

“When I went into practice in 1995,” Grossman recalls, “we were one of a few practices in New York City, maybe two or three, that injected Botox. Anti-aging procedures were really for people who were predominantly older, women in their late 40s and 50s who were combatting more visual signs of aging.” These days, there are so many things a person can do to their face before even thinking about a scalpel. In addition to sunscreen, there’s tretinoin, a retinoic acid that speeds cell turnover and boosts collagen regeneration. There are exfoliating acids that mimic the effects of a chemical peel at home as well as serums targeting redness, dark spots, and volume — a battery of skin-care products for every conceivable concern. Then there’s a suite of in-office treatments to make our faces more cushiony, even, and tight: injectables including Botox and fillers; noninvasive procedures such as microneedling, which stimulates collagen production via tiny pinpricks all over the face; resurfacing lasers and radio-frequency facials. Anyone with a couple hundred dollars to spare can walk into a medspa for injections as casually as getting a manicure.

Simply put, “We have more tools that we can start with at a younger age,” Grossman explains. “It used to be that people waited until they got really old-looking to do something. Now, people are more proactive in not getting there.” 

And the numbers do suggest millennials are being proactive. Over the past four years, the number of 30-somethings using filler and anti-wrinkle injectables like Botox and Daxxify has grown considerably. By 2022, use of both dissolvable fillers and anti-wrinkle injectables among those in their 30s was up around 70 percent from pre-pandemic numbers, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. In 2023, this group clocked the highest year-over-year increase in dissolvable hyaluronic-acid fillers (nearly 9 percent) of any other generation. This amounts to only about 3.5 million minimally invasive procedures performed nationally on those in their 30s last year. Still, among the skin experts I interviewed, the consensus held that millennials are in fact aging especially well.

“Yes, people do look more youthful today versus what the 30-year-old or 40-year-old would’ve looked like in the ’50s,” says Dr. Shereene Idriss, a cosmetic dermatologist in New York. There is one generation that may be the exception, though. If millennials owe their relative agelessness in part to better access to preventive measures earlier on, one might expect Gen Z — which gained access to the same products earlier still — to look positively embryonic. But according to Idriss, Gen Z appears to be aging more rapidly than millennials, a difference that could come down to pacing.

In her practice and online, Idriss (herself a dermfluencer with more than a million followers each on TikTok and Instagram) has noticed a recent trend toward maximalism: Teens and 20-somethings piling on products targeted for problems they don’t yet have and clamoring for injections to forestall wrinkles that haven’t set in. She sees a lot of young patients “treating their faces as if they were 40-year-olds at 18,” she explains. “Their skin has just lost its luster — they’ve broken their skin barrier down because they’ve lost their moisture and their elasticity.” On the more extreme end, she sees patients in their 20s starting with filler and Botox. But start too early with those and you risk looking puffy, frozen, distorted.

According to all four skin experts I interviewed, this can age a person before their time. Earlier this summer, Dr. Daniel Barrett, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, inadvertently put that theory to the test in a viral TikTok that earned him a fair bit of criticism. In the video, Barrett’s staff ask him to guess the ages of several women from this year’s Love Island U.K. class based on their cast photos; he estimated them to be between 32 and 42 years old when really they were 24 to 26. “I almost didn’t release it because I don’t like to make people feel bad,” Barrett says of the video. “But then I decided to keep it there because I thought it would raise awareness to say, look, people, pump the brakes on some of this stuff.”

With all of that in mind, if millennials do in fact look younger, this may just be compared with the generations sandwiching them: teens and 20-somethings who have too many interventions at their fingertips and Gen-Xers who grew up with comparatively few. Having recently watched a video of someone attempting to exfoliate their face with Morton’s salt, lime juice, and carton egg white, I have no trouble believing a lot of people are doing too much of the wrong thing when it comes to their skin. Still, I’m not convinced that cosmetic procedures are really the norm for either Gen Z or millennials. And what of the 30-something who hasn’t dabbled in treatments? How much or how little are we bringing down the average? Can it really be true that, as a generation, millennials look so much younger?

To help answer that question, I took my 35-year-old face to the Liverpool Street location of Pulse Light Clinic, a laser and skin-care center with offices throughout London, for VISIA Skin Analysis. The VISIA machine performs an in-depth scan of the patient’s skin, measuring the discoloration, wrinkles, texture, pores, bacteria, brown spots, redness, and sun damage that accrue over time. It then compares those percentages with its database of faces, calculating the approximate age of the person’s skin relative to their actual age: their TruSkin Age score. Based on the results, clinicians can build a treatment plan targeting specific problem areas, ideally shaving a few years off that score.

I didn’t expect the camera to tell me I look ten years younger than I really am — this tool is used to sell services, after all — but I did think I was doing pretty well. Thanks to my sun-vigilant mother, I have used SPF most days since childhood, and thanks to cystic acne, I’ve used tretinoin every night since my early 20s. I run my face through with microcurrents each morning in an attempt to forestall hereditary jowls, and I have dumped considerable energy and money into fine-tuning a skin-care routine that deploys antioxidants, peptides, and exfoliants in measured rotation. As I positioned my face for the scan, I felt optimistic — confident, even. I rested my chin on the machine’s plinth as two prongs lifted my bangs out of my eyes, which were closed against three bright flashes of light. Within a minute, the machine calculated my results: 36 years old on the left side of my face, 31 on the right.

“Such a big difference!” the clinic’s lead practitioner, Chrystella Kanaris-Brady, exclaimed while comparing the numbers. It’s also a confusing one. I got dinged for the rosacea around my nose and chin, along with yet-to-emerge under-eye wrinkles — something to look forward to — but showed next to no sun damage and low hyperpigmentation. Largely for that reason, Kanaris-Brady assured me, my score was “actually quite good.” At least for a face that has evidently been living two very different lives.

Kanaris-Brady explained that even among patients who are vigilant about sunscreen, avoid heavy smoking and drinking, and are attentive to their skin care, TruSkin Age scores typically hover around their actual age. If a patient makes an effort to protect their skin, the score may be a few years younger but more likely a year or two older. If they don’t do anything, they may score about five years older. Either way, they can still end up with a face that is simultaneously two different ages simply by virtue of their habits. In my case, for example, the age gap could reflect all the driving I did as a teenager, the typically sunscreened left cheek sponging up more UV rays than the right. The only other thing I can think of is that I tend to sleep on my left side.

For what it’s worth, Kanaris-Brady echoed the thesis that millennials occupy the anti-aging sweet spot. I don’t disbelieve it, but I don’t know how meaningful a difference it really is. As I press serums into cheeks at once older and younger than they should be, I wonder what I am chasing. Everything I do to my skin — and I do a lot — has apparently brought its age down by an average of 1.5 visually negligible years, unevenly distributed from ear to ear. I’m shooting at a target that will never stop moving, attempting to clear a bar that’s always resetting at a younger and younger age, even as mine advances. I’ll keep layering on sunscreen, but no amount of factor 50 can stop the clock. In the end, time comes for us all.