Take 10 years off your face - but is there more to age than skin?

[MJinZ]

How good are you at telling people's ages?

People think that their skin is all that changes as you age, but I'm convinced that people's facial geometry and bone actual shifts as they age.

I can clearly tell when someone is like 30-40 years old with great tight flawless and/or botoxed etc skin... and someone who is, well, 21 years old.

 

[Tsavo]

Accurate to within two years if in person.

 

[Matthiasa]

Hmm... if you think botoxed skin looks flawless you are sorely mistaken.
If their skin is unnatural looking add 20-30 years.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Facial geometry does change -- you start losing facial fat as you age. Not talking about double chins or massive chubby cheeks or other characteristics of obesity, more like the subtle pockets of fat around the orbital bones, buccal fat pad, etc., that everybody has in their younger years. A little bit of fat is what gives your face some volume and a young appearance. When it starts to deflate, you start looking gaunt, not so young and healthy, and generally older. I think this goes into the stereotype that men age better than women -- by most standards of beauty, a man can pull off the gaunt, lean facial look a lot better than a woman.

Of course with the train wrecks that modern life is producing, with obesity and tanned leather-skinned idiots, losing a little facial fat is not going to be the worst of a lot of peoples' age-related appearance issues.

Something else that comes to mind is that your nose and ears continue to grow throughout your life. Noses can get fairly large and misshapen. Check out the ears some old men are sporting, they're awesomely huge. I'm gonna have some satellite dishes if I live long enough!

 

[MJinZ]

Facial geometry does change -- you start losing facial fat as you age. Not talking about double chins or massive chubby cheeks or other characteristics of obesity, more like the subtle pockets of fat around the orbital bones, buccal fat pad, etc., that everybody has in their younger years. A little bit of fat is what gives your face some volume and a young appearance. When it starts to deflate, you start looking gaunt, not so young and healthy, and generally older. I think this goes into the stereotype that men age better than women -- by most standards of beauty, a man can pull off the gaunt, lean facial look a lot better than a woman.

Of course with the train wrecks that modern life is producing, with obesity and tanned leather-skinned idiots, losing a little facial fat is not going to be the worst of a lot of peoples' age-related appearance issues.

Something else that comes to mind is that your nose and ears continue to grow throughout your life. Noses can get fairly large and misshapen. Check out the ears some old men are sporting, they're awesomely huge. I'm gonna have some satellite dishes if I live long enough!

Actually noses don't get bigger, they droop. Same with ears. Both may give the appearance of a bigger nose, and both are from gravity. Same with testicles - older men will have saggier scrotums.