I'm 62 and I make TikTok videos about dressing like my 23-year-old daughter to show that style has no age

• Gym Tan, a 62-year-old mom in California, started a TikTok account in 2021 inspired by her daughter.
• Tan posts about her fashion choices to help older women feel more confident about how they look.

I moved from Hong Kong to California seven years ago, and the adjustment was a bit of a struggle.

I had worked in the high-end fashion industry for around 30 years, and when I moved to America, I started working in consulting, which wasn't really fulfilling and didn't keep me busy enough. On top of that, my love of high-end fashion felt out of place in casual California, where the standard uniform most people choose to wear is leggings, a sweatshirt, and a puffer jacket.

One day during the pandemic, my daughter Mya, who's 23 and works as a social-media content creator in New York, came to visit me for the winter break. She saw that the work I was doing wasn't really my jam, and she suggested that I take my passion for fashion to TikTok by making videos about the way I styled myself.

At first, the idea of being on TikTok as a 62-year-old woman was a bit daunting, but I took her advice on board as a passion project, not expecting it to go anywhere. Within three weeks, I had around 10,000 followers, and last year, I started to pursue content creation full-time, having now built up a following of 140,000 people.

I've come to see my presence on TikTok as inspiring to other women in my age group. I hope to show them that they can continue to gain confidence in themselves and the way they look as they get older, just as I have.

I'm hoping to boost people's confidence and show that there's no reason to worry about getting older

I started off on TikTok by posting "outfit of the day" videos, where I would talk through the clothes I decided to wear each day. I'm a big fan of a traditional, classic look, and wanted to show others my age how they could dress fashionably in an understated way.

As I developed an audience of older women on TikTok, I became more confident in my outfit choices. In July, I saw a much younger influencer, Olivia Mcdowell, wearing a bold, black Abercrombie dress that I absolutely loved.

I decided to order the same dress and I stitched her video, showing what I looked like wearing it. The clip went viral, receiving 1.6 million views, and I received so many comments from people saying that I looked incredible, which helped me develop my online messaging that older women can look just as fabulous in a dress seen on a young person.

I've since posted a few videos with my daughter where we wear similar outfits to show that style truly has no age. I've shared videos where we're both wearing swimwear or sexy dresses, and seeing the positive response on social media, where nobody is telling me that I shouldn't be dressing like that at my age, has felt empowering in so many ways.

I think a lot of women start to feel more invisible as they get older, because of societal beauty standards and all these fashion magazines which tell us that we're supposed to look a certain way. I myself started to feel insecure when I was approaching 50, because I was worried that I would be looked at differently.

But to have actually come through on the other side, and to be showing people on social media that I have found so much confidence in my 60s, I think that's a really powerful message.

I've loved being on TikTok as an older person and have felt so welcomed by the younger generation

TikTok is thought to be home to Gen Z users primarily, and I was a bit nervous at first about how younger users would treat me on the app. My daughter told me that TikTok loves older people, and I've definitely found that to be the case.

Young people who watch my videos say they love seeing my daughter and I interact, sometimes because they don't have great relationships with their own parents themselves. Others have told me that they love my content because it makes them feel less afraid of growing old, so I've really loved having younger people in my audience, as well as women my own age.

Of course, I belong to a generation where technology is all a bit daunting, so I'm really grateful to my daughter, who has taught me so much about how TikTok works.

I'd really encourage any other people out there in my age group, who feel scared or cautious about having a social media presence, to just go for it, because this last year has been the best year of my life so far, even though I never would have expected that to be the case.

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