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As she watched Olympic analysts speculate about the true age of those suspiciously youthful-looking Chinese gymnasts, Jocelyn Blandford could feel a twinge of sympathy.

Though her boss says Ms. Blandford sounds and acts like she's 35, the 21-year-old public relations project manager is used to being mistaken for much younger.

"I look like I'm 12," she sighs.

At her first corporate job, she made the mistake of replying honestly when co-workers asked her age. Suddenly the same people who had treated her respectfully in e-mails and conference calls started shunting her off to make-work tasks and calling her "kid."

Now she doesn't lie about her age, but she does play it coy.

"I'll say, 'Oh, a woman never reveals her age,' " Ms. Blandford says.

Fudging one's age has always been endemic in sports and entertainment. The jury is still out on the tiny Chinese gymnasts with missing (baby?) teeth.

Several sources have reported evidence that some of the girls are younger than the Olympic minimum of 16. On Friday, the International Olympic Committee asked the International Gymnastics Federation to look into the issue; China handed over documents and an investigation is ongoing.

In baseball, four-time All-Star Miguel Tejada recently confessed that he shaved two years off his age when he got his first contract.

And thanks to the wonders of Botox and collagen, you can't swing a hair extension in Hollywood without hitting a 35-year-old starlet claiming to be 27.

Age is a touchy topic in the workplace, too. For every youthful-looking professional struggling to be taken seriously, there's a middle-aged manager wondering if he should dye his grey hair to get the next promotion.

In some industries, the pressure to appear young starts surprisingly early. Tom Anderson, who co-founded MySpace five years ago, was recently busted for listing his age as 32 on his personal page when he's actually 37.

Perhaps the idea of a 20-something wunderkind starting a social networking site was sexier to investors seeking to capitalize on the youth market. He and co-founder Chris DeWolfe refused to give their ages for a current Fast Company magazine cover story; in fact, the only employee identified by age in the story is the 27-year-old chief operating officer.

Playing fast and loose with the details of your youthfulness (or lack thereof) rarely ends well, experts say.

"Lying about your age is never a good idea because lies catch up with you," says John Challenger, chief executive officer of Chicago-based human resources firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "It might help in the short term, but in the long term it damages your reputation."

Mr. Challenger discourages young and old alike from leaving dates off their resumes in an attempt to play down their age. It usually has the opposite effect, sending up red flags in the hiring manager's mind, making them wonder about your age even more.

Still, Mr. Challenger says, more subtle age-cloaking measures are okay. Growing a mustache or wearing glasses can help young workers look older, if that's what they want, and he does recommend that women and men alike dye grey hair.

"It helps to counteract the people who are biased," he says.

When it comes to judging age in the workplace, it's not just how you look, it's what you say and how you act. When meeting with corporate clients, Ms. Blandford tries to dial down her naturally bubbly nature a notch or two so she'll appear older and more responsible.

It's a good idea to leave out dates when you're engaging in office small talk. Heed this advice, fresh-faced newcomers to the work force: No one wants to hear that you graduated from high school in 2004, or that you totally remember the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks because that was the day you got your braces off. That might make your co-workers feel very old, and feeling very old might make them feel sad, and feeling sad might make them want to assign you terribly boring and annoying tasks so that you can share their sadness.

So when a colleague is reminiscing about what a great movie Annie Hall or Pretty in Pink is, don't chime in with, "Yeah, that's my mom's favourite movie" - just smile and nod. (This is good advice for a lot of water-cooler chats, by the way.)

Job seekers past their late 40s may not want to emphasize their age, but they shouldn't be shy about their experience, says Jim Geraghty, president of Happen, an Oakville, Ont.-based networking group for mid-career executives. In the past few years, Mr. Geraghty says, corporate hiring managers have started realizing that the retiring of the baby boom generation will leave them with a dearth of experienced workers. Suddenly, having a few grey hairs isn't such a bad thing.

"Age is certainly an issue, but I think it is more in the minds of the individuals applying for work," Mr. Geraghty says.

He says he thinks Botox injections before job interviews are overkill.

"You can only lie so much. Sooner or later someone's going to figure it out," he says. "If they're looking for 24-year-olds, just say, 'Thank you very much' and move on."

Indeed, whether you look young or old, finding an employer that accepts the real you is 90 per cent of the battle.

Ms. Blandford stuck out her one-year contract at the firm where she was sidelined because of her age, but after that she joined a new public relations company. At Per Sway, she's working on projects targeted to an audience aged 18 to 35, so her youth is seen as an asset rather than a demerit.

At least she can look forward to a day when looking a decade younger won't seem so terrible. Mr. Challenger says he always looked young for his age, and at the beginning of his career it used to bother him.

"I'm 53," he says. "Now I like it."