Why Aging Appears On The Face
A stranger who wants to know another person’s age, he/she can either ask for identification or observes the person’s face, but latter age is less intrusive and almost as accurate. People are able to verify age from the face with surprising accuracy, to within a few years when the person judged is between 20-60 years, a skill that develops early in life when even babies can distinguish children from adults.
How the Face Gets Aged
As the face gets matured, it changes some of its enduring and strengthening properties and acquires new attributes like wrinkles. These changes are the basis for information about the aging of the face. The maximum changes occur from infancy to puberty as the face and head mature into a fully developed form. The eyes, nose, and mouth features of the face expand to fill a relatively greater area of the surface of the cranium. The relative area occupied by the forehead shrinks as the eyes move up into this area. The eyes become proportionately smaller and the forehead slopes back more. The face becomes smaller in respect to the rest of the body and the chin inclines to become larger and more protrusive. Some of these changes may go on, but less dramatically, into adulthood, but other changes begin to occur to mark aging of the face and correspond to the decline of the face past the generative years into old age. The skin becomes darker, less flexible, rougher, and more leathery; lines, wrinkles, folds, pouches, and blemishes or discolorations gradually appear and/or become more pronounced; muscles and connective tissues change their elasticity; and fatty deposits and bone may be lost to produce pouches in the cheeks, bags under the eyes, sagging under the chin or a double chin, opening of pores, and other changes in the way soft tissues conform to the underlying bony structure. Changes in the vascular supply of the skin and in hair, oil and sweat glands usually occur. These changes are illustrated in the images on the right above. There are also changes in the movements and behaviors of the face as it ages, but little is known about these changes because they require a long research period to study. During aging of the face, fine control of the facial muscles is lost, similar to finger dexterity.