AGE LIMITS: DOES AGE DICTATE WHAT YOU CAN & CAN'T WEAR?

When age is not but a number, rather a pesky reminder of inevitable and irrevocable change.

Turning 27 did something to me this year. 

It is a number that has hit me harder than any other before it. And has become one that I mumble as opposed to coherently enunciate. I'm not sure if subconsciously I set this up as a milestone of sorts. A barometre to measure my life against thus far. An unknown finish line, an unspoken deadline, a to-do list that never got done and by default, a number that has unwittingly become a reminder of my incompletes, do-tomorrows and flat out failings. 

Questions of marriage and children (as inevitably follows) are becoming evermore frequent, and my evasive retorts of being but a mere babe myself are becoming less cute and the annoyance harder to mask in my laboured responses. Being asked for ID is a relative non-occurrence. Those anxious teenage years at the dread of being asked to prove my age, are rewritten by my present attempts to disprove my age. Times of being interrogated whilst trying to purchase matchsticks, glue and spray paint (not at the same time) are mere anecdotes of a past life. Little memories that I pull out at parties as conversation fillers of days gone by.

I keep meaning to buy anti-ageing creams/potions of year-rewinding capabilities, but I feel that a sign of defeat, an admittance that I am in fact old-er. I do realise that I was and have been ageing long before I hit 27. I aged to reach 27, but this is the year that I noticed it.

The long commutes to work over this past year have led me to this. Self-reflection is a positive and necessary means of self-growth and betterment, but that doesn't mean the gravity of such personal realisations, doesn't knock the wind out of you all the same. My ageing only truly hit me when on one particularly long journey, my mind turned to what I perhaps wouldn't be able to wear much longer. Miniskirts for one, (though contentious, as I know many women who wear skirts regardless of age) but I'm talking about those arse-skimming, completely impractical skirts, that speak of reckless, late nights of giggling, hangover-free youth.

Hoodies too, I feel perhaps might also have an imminent use-by-date.  Many a teenage angsty moment was non-verbally communicated through the hood pulled low about my eyes. The rebellion of inverting the practical use of such an item as a visual signifier of my mood, was both a handy warning to my parents and immensely cool. I know that there will be many more items that I have unknowingly neglected from this list and probably won't realise them as artefacts of a previous me, until I so decide to *try* to wear them. 

Life right now consists of my evolving fashion proclivities as I try to redefine myself as a twenty-something, intent on refining an inherent eclecticism. Retaining the essence of self, but with more polish. Currently I do not wear miniskirts very often, if ever. This is for no reason other than I like the freedom of trousers. Perhaps miniskirts will come into my sphere of interest again, then again perhaps they won't. And it is this that I need to remind myself of. I am not and do not need to mourn something that never was. 

Age may actually not be the reason that certain items have dropped from my interest. It's merely personal preference. The looming deadline that I have self-imposed is a fiction that I have constructed. The miniskirt is innocent. Yet, I have capitulated it as a representation of youth and in me not wearing it any longer, it has become a rejection of youth and an admittance of age. 

The hoodie is also exemplary of this. It resonates of college days gone by, a fond time of happiness and personal freedom. The lack of uniform meant for an abundance of self-expression, of which I was congratulated upon, with countless questions of: "where did you get that?". In being myself I gained approval, the very thing that teenagers (& adults) crave. Thus these items have become symbolic of happiness during a time that I happened to be young-er.

This is not intended to be a morose tale of loss. It is more a stream of consciousness. I'm not even sure age appropriateness is even really a thing, more-so a mental construct. It is a reminder that just as there is a beginning, there is an end. What was once taken for granted, easily becomes what is most longed for. What is normal is ever-changing, time passes, tastes change and people grow. But it is in these nuances of life, in the mundane, that things get missed without even realising it.

All seemed to be affirmed in my mind when Kendall Jenner wore a lookalike version of Paris Hilton's 'vintage' 21st birthday dress. I was now part of an era passed, having experienced the peak Hilton years during my youth. It was now just a throwback. A sense of nostalgia overwhelmed, as I wish I'd appreciated the time before age was even a consideration. And then last week Paris Hilton, as a now 37 year old woman, re-wore her 2000's infamous, sex-on-a-stick dress and my fears of age appropriateness dissipated, because whatever the age, she proved, that's hot.

(Photos via : theyallhateus.com & pinterest)