Young stars like Kaia Gerber and Zendaya look older than they really are, proving that women can never win

Lydia Spencer-ElliottSun, September 6, 2026 at 5:00 AM UTC

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Beautiful women have always appeared older to me. Even popular girls at school had an air of maturity that basically just came from confidence – or the beauty tips imparted by someone’s older sister. As such, the fact that I’m the same age as a model like Kendall Jenner simply does not compute in my brain. No matter your age, it’s easy to look at someone styled and polished and think “I hope I look like that when I grow up” – even if you’re already there.

Most recently, the model daughter of Cindy Crawford, Kaia Gerber, has been met with criticism for presenting far older than her 24 years. After a visit to the US Open in a black midi dress and peep-toe heels last week, the comments came thick and fast: “I have to say she looks a lot older than 24,” one person observed. “She looks like she’s old enough to be on one of those The Real Housewives of____ shows,” added another.

Comparisons to Gerber’s mother have also, inevitably, accumulated. In this case, her sleek look was lined up beside photos of Crawford at the 1991 Oscars in a thigh-slit red Versace gown alongside her 41-year-old then-boyfriend Richard Gere, when she was a starlet of just 25.

While women have long had the pressure to act beyond their years – both in the public eye and privately behind closed doors – any visual hint of this sophistication is fair game for criticism and ridicule; Just because Gerber put on a pencil skirt, the internet acted like she’d had a facelift.

Gerber with her mother Cindy Crawford in Los Angeles in 2025 (Getty)

Similarly, Florence Pugh, 30, and Kylie Jenner, 29, are among stars who are often seen as presenting older than they are. Ironic in an industry where women are celebrated for their youthful looks and actually anyone over 30 starts panicking about being too old. Plus, with the popularity of so-called “Instagram face”, all ages are starting to blur into “same face”. So, a Gen Z patient could theoretically walk out of an injector’s office with a similar face to Kris Jenner, 70.

But when it comes to clothes, while one cohort of Gen Z has been owning a youthful chaotic style full of fun and whimsy, another cohort has been pulled towards the neutral colours and clean-lined silhouettes of the Nineties minimalism trend that has had the style set in a long-lasting chokehold. And it’s mostly the young women who’ve adopted this aesthetic who attract the same criticism as Gerber, including Kendall Jenner, who was spotted out in London in a Bottega Veneta midi dress alongside boyfriend Jacob Elordi, and Zendaya, who’s grown synonymous with the Christian Louboutin So Kate stilettos throughout her 20s.

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“I think I do have wisdom to offer,” Zendaya, who stepped into the spotlight on the Disney series Shake It Up at age 14, told Elle ahead of her 30th birthday this month. “But I also do still feel like a f****** kid. Like, what the f***, I’m about to be 30? I still feel like a child inside.”

Zendaya, recently said she ‘feels like a child’ but often dresses older than her age (Getty)

The criticism of an adult woman for wearing a pencil skirt and heels is enough to turn your hair (prematurely) grey. Particularly as it was only earlier this summer that there was pearl-clutching over Olivia Rodrigo “infantilising” herself in a babydoll dress. At the risk of sounding like America Ferrera’s call-to-arms monologue in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie: There is, seemingly, no right way for a woman to dress, or exist.

As Anne Helen Petersen wrote in her 2017 book Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud that analysed unruly women in the public eye: “Their bodies, words, and actions have become a locus for the inflammatory rhetoric usually reserved only for political figures. It’s as if each of these women is constantly igniting the line of acceptable behaviour: you don’t know where it is until she steps over it, at which point it bursts into flames.” In 2026, God forbid you wear a bodycon skirt and court shoes, or a summer dress.

(Getty)

If we’re to look at each of these stars counterparts, you rarely – if ever – hear about Tom Holland being too baby-faced to be a super hero, Timothee Chalamet’s old man moustache, or Jacob Elordi’s shapeshifting jaw line, which is largely attributed to aging rather than surgery. Fame, of course, brings some level of scrutiny; but not quite the same lambasting young female stars get.

Ultimately, style swings like a pendulum: It wasn’t uncommon for people in their twenties and thirties to wear three-piece suits a century ago. Twenty-year-old women first started wearing the modern pencil skirt in the Fifties, after Christian Dior introduced the design in 1954. Today, these women, lest we forget, are in full glam. They own jeans and T-shirts, too.

Kendall Jenner at Paris Fashion Week in October 2025 (Getty)

The repeated criticism of sophisticated style feels more like a collective mourning for young people’s loss of innocence, frivolity and freedom. Children who haven't yet learned to read are being fed content and algorithms designed to hook adults online. When it comes to presenting as older, perhaps, look at everyone’s brains, their stress levels, rather than their wardrobe choices. That’s where the real ageing is.

In adulthood, there’s no such thing as not dressing for your age, as style influencers like 61-year-old Grece Ghanem have dedicated their careers to demonstrating. There are only clothes, the people who choose to wear them – and the moral panic we attach to those choices.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”