Things That Make You Look Older (or Younger)

Why is that two people who looked identical (as in identical twins) for much of their lives look different when they reach middle age?  That’s what researchers from Case Western Reserve University wanted to find out when they asked objective observers to take a good look at the pictures of 186 pairs of identical twins, and guess how much older one was than the other. As the L.A. Times reports, the perceived age differences were then correlated with the lifestyle factors listed on questionnaires filled out by the twins.
What’s the damage? Divorce, it turns out, is expensive for women as well as men: Divorced women were judged to look two years older than those who had not been divorced.  Antidepressants add some serious time, and so, of course, does smoking, booze, and time in the sun. What about fat? That seems to work both ways: Having a greater body mass index, as the Times kindly describes it, was found to make people under age 40 look older but people over 40 look younger.
Read more in the Los Angeles Times.