One of the things we did in my Sociolinguistics class in university was analyze print advertisements. While analyzing an ad for some kind of beauty product, the prof asked us who the target audience is.
"Women at the age where they are just starting to see fine lines on their face," said one of my classmates.
"And what age is that?" asked the prof?
"Late 20s," said one of my older classmates. The other older classmates and the prof all nodded and murmured assent.
I was rather surprised that the beginnings of wrinkles would turn up while you're still in your 20s, but, being only 19 years old myself at the time, I had no actual frame of reference.
My own fine lines began showing right on schedule, at the age of 27. And, since I became aware of them, I also began noticing the presence or absence of lines on other people's faces. I must have seen people with fine lines before, probably including those of my classmates in that Sociolinguistics class who could attest expertly to when fine lines start making their appearance, but it was never a factor that I took specific note of when processing a face as a whole.
It occurs to me that this might be the answer to the mystery of why younger LCBO workers keep carding me when older workers stopped long ago!
If the younger LCBO workers are like my younger self, they might not notice my fine lines as evidence that I'm no teenager. But they'd be more likely to notice my acne since they've most likely been through acne themselves.
Similarly, people who haven't started greying yet might not notice my few individual grey hairs (I didn't notice random strands of grey on people who were anything less than salt-and-pepper before I started greying myself), but the fact that my hair is long, which is culturally marked as youthful, is readily apparent to anyone of any age.
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