Recently, I was at home for spring break and went to lunch with with my mom at the middle school where she works. When I entered the building, I was quickly mistaken for a student.

This happens to me frequently; I look young for my age.

This has always been the case, so I’m used to it by now. People always mistake me for being much younger and, when I correct them, the first thing they say is: “you’ll appreciate that so much when you’re older.”

This sentence is something I’ve been hearing all my life but, recently, I started thinking about the why behind it.

Society places so much emphasis on looking younger than you are and all of the perks that come with youth and a youthful appearance. And it’s all very bizarre when you start thinking about it. 

Today, I want to examine our culture’s obsession with youth, sharing the ways that youth is praised and sometimes even fetishized in our world. Let’s get into it.

Table of Contents

Youth and Fashion

One of the places where youth obsession is most prevalent is one that’s close to home: the fashion industry. As we’ve discussed here in the past, it’s common for designers to use underage models in runway shows. Not only can this be harmful to the models who have to handle a stressful job and a lot of criticism at a young age, it also can create incredibly unrealistic beauty standards.

If the ideal “model” body is, many times, a child’s body, women cannot possibly live up to the ideal. It’s not for lack of trying: Women of all ages are constantly pressured to attempt to recapture the body they had while they were young. This is nearly always a losing game. I’ve seen countless commercials where women in their forties brag about “getting back to their high school weight,” which oftentimes is just not a natural weight for their 40-year-old body. Cue the yo-yo diet. Alternatively, teenage girls are encouraged to maintain their youthful bodies at all costs, which can lead to them using unhealthy methods to do so.