Well I’ve noticed a few brands increasing their reach by upping their “cool factor”.

A great example is the rad new look that Disney characters have: “Disney has been really good about expanding their brand to include things that would appeal to hipsters of all ages. For the last decade or more everything from their films to their toys, their couture jewelry and collectibles have included modern artsy versions in addition to the classic ones. The latest are their new soft plush toys that were inspired by the urban vinyl toy culture. The modern looking 12″ tall toys called Pook-A-Looz (okay, so the name sucks) were designed to capture the personalities of iconic Disney characters in an edgy, offbeat way.”

Chiquita Banana also updated their image not long ago.  I personally love the new look and can see people wanting to collect all the new “characters.”

Whether it’s the packaging or the actual product or service, widening the appeal is always a great way to approach a “makeover.”  There are definitely people in every age bracket who “think age has nothing to do with how I act or feel.”

Because the truth is, today’s grandparents are every bit as sweet, loving and full of elderly wisdom, they just happen to skydive, Facebook and run marathons. In Japan, senior citizens have become such a target market that entire shopping complexes have been built focused on products that would interest them.

Looking stateside, senior citizens are still primarily viewed as “Ma & Pa”, of the Greatest Generation. Thier kids, the Boomers, have been in the spotlight several times for reinventing thier age bracket. But Boomers aren’t the only ones letting go of “acting thier age”. A new reality show is set to premiere on WE called “Sunset Daze” and focuses on the lives of residents of a retirement community.

The trailer shows everything from skeet shooting to tennis and heated conversation, all the staples of reality TV and what makes Jersey Shore well… Jersey Shore. It’s essentially the same crazy antics and “captivating drama” you’d expect from a house of college students, except they’re all senior citizens.

What I wonder is why the push for “extreme Boomerism” (yep, made up a word there) when we’ve been preached that “70 is the new 50″ and “40 is the new 20″ over and over. We get it, just because you’re an age doesn’t mean you’re limited to what you can do.

Aging up and aging down are rapidly becoming key behavior points in our culture. But, have we hit a point in culture where we’re all just trying to prove to each other that age has no boundaries? If so, then what’s the difference between a senior acting 40, a Boomer acting thirty and a teenager acting twenty? Two are told they have youthful spirit, and one is told they’re not old enough. Why is it we’re willing to push to be younger, but restrict when children yearn to act older?

Ok, so I originally spotted this “toy” on a hilarious website called People of Walmart.  It’s a celebration of the kooks and freaks that tend to grace Walmart with their presence.  Well it got me thinking about the evidence in DVR Lifestyle.  The Human Truth™ is “I want to pick the good parts.”™

It’s like fast forwarding or rewinding to do what you want to do, regardless of age.

You can often come away with the notion that kids are growing up too fast.  But perhaps they are growing up according to the world they live in now.  Maybe it’s just part of The New Normal?

I mean, most of the people I know have tattoos… it’s far from the taboo it was years ago.  If kids grow up looking at Mom & Dad’s tatts, watching music videos and Miami Ink etc… then perhaps it just follows naturally that they want to play with such a toy.

Ok… so this still is quite a wacky piece of evidence but rather than just dismiss it, I like to think of it as another reminder of the evolution of acceptability.  We’ve seen it time and time again: unlikely concepts in the emerging side of life have grown into the mainstream.  So don’t be too quick to scoff at the weird stuff, perhaps it points to a larger social trend?

An article in the New York Times gives us some surprising  statistics concerning the exponential growth of social networking site twitter . The 18 and under demographic, aka the internet generation, is not responsible for the growth of the site, it is, by and large populated and popularized by the 18-35 age group (gen y).

“[The 18-year-old's] reluctance to use Twitter, a feeling shared by others in her age group, has not doomed the microblogging service. Just 11 percent of its users are aged 12 to 17, according to comScore. Instead, Twitter’s unparalleled explosion in popularity has been driven by a decidedly older group. That success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations. – New york Times

This is not only true of Twitter, take a look at this information from Facebook’s website…

* More than 250 million active users
* More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
* More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
* The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
*

This is an important realization, especially in terms of marketing. When we set out to create a campaign that will utilize social networks to carry our message it is important to realize who we are delivering that message to. As it turns out, Twitter is a better place to connect to the 34 year old father of two than the 17 year old who sends out 10,000 texts a month.

This will be increasingly true as time goes on. In ten years time , we will see generation x take the place of the baby boomers in terms of age, social networking will be a communication as foreign of a conceptas the cell phone is today. Gone is the day when we can assume that social networks are for the young.

Maybe even more than other generations the lines are blurring between the end of ‘youth’ and beginning of adulthood. Generally speaking, it’s become culturally acceptable now to have lifestyles that would have been seen as quite “unusual” only a few decades ago. Dressing casually at work, choosing not to get married, renting -not buying a house in the burbs, acting like “kidults“. Well, this site takes advantage of those wistful feelings of not wanting to grow up and take on adult responsibilities… even if one of those responsibilities is to clothe your kids…

According to the New York Post:

THIS summer, by his own count, 13-year-old Greg Grossman seared 75 pounds of scallops, cured 30 pounds of salmon, plated 200 micro-green salads and reduced at least 20 bottles of red wine.

There’s more. The kiddie chef, who started his own catering company at age 11 and has seared and sautéed his way through New York’s prestigious Hamptons, has just scored a reality TV deal to star in his own cooking show. Sure, there’s plenty of cooking shows out there but the message is all about the packaging these days. I’d be much more amused, and motivated, getting my cooking lessons from the young lad than—well we won’t mention any names but you get the drift.

Our DVR lifestyle wave is literally about adults pressing the rewind button and kids pressing fast forward. The life evidence pieces you find here are about people of all ages making the statement that age doesn’t always have something to do with how we act or feel. With the culinary experience this kid has already under his belt, I’d say the notion of kids menu and old chefs proves once again age can be the exception not rule.

In a world where children are growing up increasingly fast and adults wish to recapture their youth, there’s no telling what you will find in our DVR lifestyle wave. As with our other life evidences pieces we find under this wave, dating author Alec Greven is proof that age has nothing to do with how we act or feel –because he’s only nine.

Time magazine features the story of this young lad, whose book “How to Talk to Girls” covers everything from relationships:

“Sometimes, you get a girl to like you, then she ditches you. Life is hard, move on! Or sometimes it just doesn’t work out. I had a crush on a girl in preschool. Then my family had to move, so I had to let her wash out of my mind.”

To gift buying:

Try to find out what she likes before you give her something. You should go around to her friends to get ideas. And I wouldn’t do flowers and gifts until you are older, like in middle school, because it seems weird in elementary school. Unless you go to a school dance.”

For those of you with little girls at home, tell us you’re not at lease slightly amused. This little Romeo’s handbook on getting a girlfriend is everything but elementary. Time’s review says nothing in the book is incorrect. Sometimes, it’s the simplest of advice that’s the most reliable; and we hope big boys will find this book in the self-help section of romance, might help to put things in perspective.

Haircuts by Children invites the consideration of children as creative and competent individuals whose aesthetic choices can be trusted.

I am not sure if we will be seeing 8 year olds in congress anytime soon, but the point that children are often undervalued and unrecognized as individuals is valid. Are children not capable of decision making or are they simply never given the chance? It is funny that we treat the people that will have the greatest influence on our future as if their ideas do not matter or are naïve and possibly even worse, do not give them a voice in the creation the policies that will shape their world.

Rolling Stone magazine’s interview with Twilight actor Robert Pattinson confirmed a little insight we’ve all been well aware of for some time now at CultureWaves –that age has nothing to do with how I act or feel. The “I” in this case, being the blatantly excited 8 year old girls asking the vampire star to “bite” them. After Stones asked him how it felt to have girls “that are so young have this incredibly sexualized thing” around him, here’s what the 22 year old actor had to say:

It’s weird that you get 8-year-old girls coming up to you saying, “Can you just bite me? I want you to bite me.” It is really strange how young the girls are, considering the book is based on the virtues of chastity, but I think it has the opposite effect on its readers though. -via

For those of you who haven’t even heard about Twilight, it’s a PG-13 rated film about a high school aged girl and a 125 year old vampire who fall in love. Both vampire and girl fight the urge of kissing, lest the vampire lose control and she become, well, his dinner. Based on the novel by Stephanie Meyer, Twilight is just the first in a four book series about forbidden passion. If Pattinson thinks things are ‘weird’ now amongst his devoted young fans, he’s barely scratched the beginning!