What year was it? How old was she then?

Aurora's last 10 years in pictures

Aurora was born on 15th of June 1996. She’s 29 years old now, and she was only 19, close to 20, when her first album was released. The amount of photos and footages of this amazing artist is probably uncountable by now. Tens and tens of thousands is my best guess, and I often read comments where people ask: “How old was she then? When was this photo taken?”. Well, thanks to Aurora’s iconic jellyfish haircut - which she acquired in 2018 - it’s possible to guess both year and age.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, on the 26th of August 2022, a fellow Warrior and Weirdo got the great honor of scissoring her jellyfish off. If you haven’t seen this video, I urge you to check it out here. More - her hair seems to grow in three-year-cycles, before the major parts of her hair is cut short again. The length and shape of her bangs also vary - she never has her hair fall before her eyes 😊.

As you will notice from the galleries below, her hair isn’t the only changes that occur as she grows older. In 2015, she still got the more rounded face-shape to indicate her young age, but as she grows older, her jaw drops down a tad, and the shape of her face gets thinner. Tiny changes we should note as well is the more sharper cheekbones, and if you check out her latest performance on KEXP, you’ll notice that her many smiles has left some tracks as well. As you scan through the galleries, you might also consider posture and head angle – older girls / woman often have a more relaxed or grounded presence.¹

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2015

Her hair was quite short and shaped around her face. Her ears covered, and her bangs pushed to the right. She often wore a butterfly hairclip

Credits:
John, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Aurora 2015

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2016

Hair hair was longer, resting on her shoulders. Her bangs was often pushed aside, or included in some small braids that followed down the sides of her face. Sometimes her hair was knottet in small buns on her forehead

Credits photo 1 and 2:
Drew de F Fawkes, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Aurora 2016

Credits photo 3:
pitpony.photography, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Aurora 2016

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2017

Her hair was quite much longer, but she now had her bangs cut off well above her brows. Her manners shows more confidence on stage, and a lot of photos from this year shows Aurora with a messy bun on top of her head.

Credits:
Discojkn, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Aurora 2017

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2018

She had finally donned the iconic, anime haircut. Most of her hair was cut short below her ears, but she kept two braids or partly braided strands on each sides of her face,

Credits:
Tore Sætre, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Aurora 2018

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2019

Her hair was grown a little longer, and her braids was often more loosely hanging down. She still had her bangs quite short.

Credits:
Gard Reian, aurora.puppet on Instagram

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2020

Due to the pandemic, most of her shows were cancelled in 2020. That means there are not so many photos of her. She video above shows that she had lost most of the baby-fat of the adolecence, and her cheekbones are becoming more prominent. Her hair looked “wilder” and quite long - even her bangs was stretching down towards the eyebrows.

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2021

As you can see, she had cut it shorter again. Her longer cluster wasn't braided that much anymore, and it was thinned out a bit.

Credits (photo 2 is cropped):
alex.g.marinov, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Aurora 2021

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2022

In August 2022 the era of Aurora's side-braids was over. She still kept her bangs short, and the hair was cut to the length of her face.

Credits:
Drew de F Fawkes from Guildford, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Aurora 2022

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2023

As you may notice, Aurora was playing more with the bangs, giving it more shape. Her hair was closer to her shoulders.

Credits:
Knut Nicolai Børgund, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: Aurora 2023

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2024

Time flies, and her hair grows longer. Her face is no longer the round face of adolecence. Her stage precence was also becoming more mature, though she still kept her childlike soul when she spoke to the crowd or in interviews, always ready to smile - even in serious matters.

Credits:
Knut Nicolai Børgund, CC BY 4.0, shared with permission from photographer

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2025

She has donned a more clear middle part on top of her hair, and her bangs are cut short above the whole width of her face.

Credits:
Received through AURORA Newsletter from AURORA and Decca : Universal Music Operations

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Fabrice’s corner

Fabrice has been doing his usual great amount of work these past two weeks. He’s feeding us daily with various reaction videos, and makes sure that videos that disappear gets re-uploaded. I don’t have words to express how valuable his work is, taking care that the history of Aurora doesn’t get lost.

He’s currently running a poll, and he will evaluate the results already come Sunday. I think that the amount of time and energy he spends on Aurora on our behalf, we should at least take a few seconds of our time to give him some response. You will find it on his community page, or by clicking the image below:

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Final words

All these galleries and photos made this post too big to fit into an email. I hope it didn’t give you too much hassle to open and read it in a browser. Please let me know if there was any problem or if things went smooth. There is a comment-button below.

I haven’t managed to figure out when she actuelly first time appearded with her anime hairstyle. If anyone knows, please share it with us.

Those of you who follow me on Instagram, Facebook or here on Substack can expect some trivia / exercises over the next two weeks. I will post some photos to see if you can figure out what year the photo was taken and how old she was. I will not send them on mail. I don’t want to spam you 💚.

As for the next newsletter, I’m not sure if I’ll make it to the deadline in two weeks. It’s Easter holiday, and I might be too family-busy to write anything. It might even take four weeks before you hear from me again. Time will tell.

Have a lovely Easter, everyone 💚
Rune

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Sources:

1. This article about drawing people of various ages gave me clues on what to look for when comparing faces of different ages: https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/7068