NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: The viral TikTok aging filter has taken the internet by storm. Many celebrities and people are using this filter for fun, taking to social media to post their "Now & Then" appearance. ‘Today’ hosts Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb also tried out the viral filter on the show.
On the episode that aired on Thursday, July 19, Hager was left traumatized after using the viral filter. She was completely taken aback by what she saw.
‘I look like my dad’
Hager and Kotb had some amusing reactions after using the filter. The duo kicked off the segment with Kotb saying, “We’ve seen this before but this one ages you using AI. So it’s a realistic glimpse." On using the filter, Hager was shocked to see that she looked just like her father, former president George W. Bush. She said, “Whoa. I look like my dad!" to which Kotb responded with a chuckle, “You kinda do look like your dad."
While it was funny to see what Hager looked like as an older person, she said, “Don’t laugh! I’m a handsome woman. I’m having a little bit of trauma. We said we didn’t care what we look like but I do care," adding, “I’m a very manly older person and that was just, not expected. You look exactly the same and I look like a man."
Jenna Bush Hager on aging
Hager said that she recently had a talk with her husband, Henry, about growing old. She said, “Last night, I said to Henry, 'This artist that I love named Frank Tolbert died,' who was a Texas artist, and I said to Henry, 'He died and he was just in his late 70s, 77.'" She added that Henry responded by stating he would only have a few decades left if his life unfolded like the artist.
While Kotb agreed that it was “a scary way to look at it," Hager said, “Well I said, ‘How are you going to live them? Do you feel like you’re living them to the fullest?’ And he rolled over. But I do think it’s an interesting thing, because you can either think of each day as a gift. Because no day is promised! Or you can think of that as a sad thing.”
Earlier in the show, Hager reflected on aging by stating, “Aging for us is not about what we will look like in 30 years. I feel like it’s more like, what we would have done, who we would have been with, what we would have shown."
