When 47-year-old Obama took office in 2009, there was hardly a gray hair in sight.
Watching the retrospectives about Barack Obama’s presidency, one thing becomes evident: The presidency ages you. When 47-year-old Obama took office in 2009, he seemed so young, and there was hardly a gray hair in sight.
Like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before him, the stress of being a world leader seems to have caused a dramatic shift in Obama’s appearance.
The gray goes with the job, apparently. After studying the medical records of U.S. presidents back to the 1920s, Michael Roizen, the author of “Real Age: Are You as Young as You Can Be?,” concluded that the job ages presidents more rapidly than the average person. “The typical president ages two years for every year they are in office,” he told CNN in 2009.
But the gray doesn’t faze Obama — or Michelle. “Obviously, I’ve gotten a little grayer since I took this job, but otherwise I feel pretty good. And Michelle, you know, says that she still thinks I’m cute — and I guess that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” he said to NPR in 2011.
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