Anti-Aging? Not Us.
By Karen and Erica
In 1972, Susan Sontag wrote an essay, The Double Standard of Aging,” in which she remarked that “in an era in which people actually live longer and longer, what now amounts to two thirds of everyone’s life is shadowed by a poignant apprehension of unremitting loss.” Loss of youth, that is.
Even during the 60s and 70s, the years that birthed our feminist fervor, by the age of about 18 many of us had started hearing about the benefits of using anti-aging products. We were said to be living the best years of our lives then, which always seemed a little discouraging. The concept of a use-by date was inculcated early. So was the notion that a woman’s value derived from her youthful physical attributes, which would soon wither and fade.
None of that seems to have changed.
For a while, though, perhaps because the numbers of our demographic are large, and growing, and because there is some faint perception that as a group we have money and power, the whole anti-aging concept went under attack. Allure Magazine. Italian Vogue. Madonna. Lauren Hutton. Helen Mirren. Diane von Furstenberg. All decided to refuse to use the term. And they were important because they are all in the image industry.
That moment seems to have been short-lived. Actually, it probably never lived at all. Code words replaced anti-aging, like bright or translucent, but we all knew what they meant.
The way people think about the link between beauty and age is stuck in a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Do we want to live our whole lives looking back to when we were 18? Devaluing ourselves a little more with each passing day? Do we really look that bad if we are over 65?
Of course not.
We completely agree with the notion that we should take care of ourselves, and look as good as we can. Of course we should use whatever products we think make us look healthy and strong. On this point, at least, we stand with AOC. We are all about image, after all. But don’t call these products anti-aging. Goods and services that make you gorgeous have nothing to do with anti-aging. They are pro-aging. People like us—women who are active and engaged, having built on our long careers—look our age, and our age looks just great.
Do we look dewey and fresh, waiting for life to open up for us? No. Do we look elegant and powerful, in control of our lives? Yes. Who wouldn’t want that?
And—there is only way to avoid aging. If you are lucky, you will indeed start to reflect the piling on of years of life. The signs are unmistakable. You will know a lot, and it will show. You will throw caution to the winds. You will expand your list of acquaintances to people you never would have met before. You will do things you would have been scared to do when you were young, like (sometime soon) traveling alone to an exotic country. You will start a business—for retired career women. You will wear red, even though people told you not to, with purple. And, yes, your face and body will look like the layered and luminous person you are.
Who, then, would be anti-aging? Only someone too dumb to see what fun it will be when you have earned your cool and can flaunt it.
So get out there and let them see what 60, 70, 80, 90 looks like. Make them envious!