I have been reading an article in Allure magazine about the age of beauty. It has some great points, but I felt very old when one group of people declared that 36 is the ideal age for a woman. (I just turned 37, so I guess some folks think I am on the downhill slide.)
I kind of get it - when I was a kid - 11 years old - my Mom turned 36. For some reason, this is the age that stuck in my head. Logically, I knew the years were passing and I could do the math - she had me when she was 25 for if I was getting older, so was she. But I always thought of my Mom as 36. My Dad has perpetually remained 42 - which is pretty funny since he is only 2 1/2 years older than my Mom, but I never said this was a logical thought process.
Another point of the article is that your 30s is when you start to think that you feel younger than your biological age and perceive your look to be younger, too.
Actual age = 25 34 44 54
How old you feel = 26 32 38 43
How old you think you look = 23 30 37 44
Most of this has to do with being comfortable with who you are. Maybe it takes until we are really into our 30s to reach that level of comfort.
"Maybe the ideal age for any woman is ultimately the age at which she can stop thinking about how old she is...and start thinking about everything else she might do with the time allotted her."
I agree that how you look and how you feel are all about attitude.