Sadly in this day and age (!) ‘ageing’ is often paired with ‘anti’, but it shouldn’t always have to be. We dispel the myths and explore our cultural obsession with the eternal quest for youth.
‘Ageing is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been’ – David Bowie
‘Wrinkles will only go where smiles have been’ – Jimmy Buffet
‘We are always the same age inside’ – Gertrude Stein
‘Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!’ – Ingrid Bergman
Some guy said to me: ‘Don’t you think you’re too old to sing rock n’ roll?’ I said: ‘You’d better check with Mick Jagger’ – Cher
‘The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘Age is simply the number of years the world has been enjoying you!’ – Unknown
As we are now in a booming anti-ageing culture, we have become highly uncomfortable with the ageing process, and many of us have lost the ability to embrace it. Where does this come from? Is it down to our own insecurities? Is society pressuring us to stay young? Or is it just our desire to turn back the clock that is nevertheless ticking away? We have always been told to respect our elders, yet becoming elderly is portrayed in the media as such a frightening way of life.
Many people are deciding to hide the ageing process through plastic surgery and Botox. Is this down to vanity, or is there a deeper reason? The profitability of companies that benefit from this feeling pray on our insecurities and make us doubt one of the most natural parts of life. Let’s look at how the anti-ageing culture of today is really affecting our society.
The desire to want to look good shows great self-confidence. You actually care enough about yourself to want to make a good impression on the people you meet. However, it’s good to enjoy the experience of taking care of your looks, but it’s another thing entirely to feel obligated to stay youthful in order to be deemed worthy.
On a more positive note, 40% of women say they find it easier to speak their mind now that they’re older, 35% of women don’t try so hard to impress others, and 1 in 3 women think one of the main advantages of ageing is increased confidence. This brings us full circle! Caring about how you look is a great sign of self-confidence, but just being yourself and not caring what anyone else thinks also shows confidence. The point is, it doesn’t matter how you are choosing to age, as long as you are happy with your decision and are doing the right thing for you, not anyone else.
The most obvious way people are exposed to the anti-ageing culture is through social media. Studies show that social media makes women in particular feel insecure and self-conscious about the way they look. However, what you see on the surface of social media doesn’t always match what’s happening deep down. People curate what they want their life to look like to others on social media, but when you’re the person looking at their photos, all you see is the life you don’t have. You may see someone online who has glowing skin and zero wrinkles. Don’t get me wrong, some people have amazing genes, but at a certain age you are going to get wrinkles, and that’s okay. What you don’t see when looking at that person’s social media is how much work, effort, and money they have put into looking the way they do. And before you start analysing why you don’t look like your Instagrammable counterparts be safe in the knowledge that that is NOT what people actually look like anyway! According to The Modems in a Case 24 survey of 3,000 UK residents, a staggering 71% of people edit their selfies before uploading! A further 54% change imperfections on their skin and 33% edit their lips. Staggering!
Nowadays, ‘getting work done’ has become almost normalised in our society, so when older women say that they haven’t had anything done, it’s seen as shocking. However, there are still many older women out there choosing to embrace their age. Lots of celebrities have spoken out about their opinion on the subject of getting older and had some interesting things to say, especially about being role models for the younger generation. Drew Barrymore has expressed, “I’m now determined more than ever to show my daughters that ageing is a luxury’. Similarly, Reese Witherspoon said, ‘I just feel like I earned that grey hair and my fine lines. I like ‘em’. The common theme with all the women who have spoken about how they are embracing their age is perspective. They know that they’re not going to look like they did when they were 25 at 55, and they also know that that’s okay.
The fear of aging disproportionately affects women, but sadly it’s not just women, young girls are affected too.
While doing research for this article I saw that a question commonly being searched online was ‘How can we prevent ageing at a young age?’. Although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it also proposes the question, why are young girls worried about ageing? There is enough to worry about when you’re a teenager, and now the fear of ageing is added to that. The answer to that question online offered some great advice like, protect your skin from the sun, moisturise, don’t smoke and stay out of tanning beds. However, it also said ‘Avoid repetitive facial movements, like squinting, frowning…’. This applies not only to young girls, but to any person out there, why would you want to avoid showing your emotions on your face out of fear of aging? If you want to cry, cry. If you want to smile, smile. You only get one life, so enjoy today for what it is. Here are what two teenage girls had to say on this issue:
How does seeing edited pictures on social media affect how you see yourself?
Emma, 15: ‘It doesn’t really phase me to be honest, I usually just swipe or click away’.
Katie, 18: ‘It makes me feel as if there are unrealistic expectations on what I’m supposed to look like, and it makes me feel bad about myself being compared to the edited photos’.
How do you view plastic surgery and Botox?
Shana, 13: ‘I don’t agree with it, but if one of my friends were to want it, I would support them’.
Katie went on to say: ‘I think that those things are unnecessary as everyone should feel comfortable in their own skin, however, the influence of social media has caused people to believe that the only way to look good is if they stay young and fill yourself with these toxic chemicals – I think that being beautiful is about owning who you are and loving yourself for that exact reason’.
BOXOUT
POSTING A ‘NO MAKE-UP SELFIE’ IS CONSIDERED A REVOLUTIONARY ACT
In an attempt to expose this growing trend, the British fashion photographer John Rankin Waddell, launched a social experiment which he aptly named “Selfie Harm”. In this series, Rankin asked 15 teenagers to edit and retouch portraits of themselves until they considered the photos to be “social media ready”. The results were truly shocking. Displayed next to each other, Rankin’s untouched portraits show naturally beautiful women against cartoonish and doll-like caricatures. Bulging eyes and pouty lips, feature in these retouched photographs, highlighting the sad reality of beauty standards in a social media obsessed world. These portraits are of course a by-product of wider mental health issues relating to social media, such as body dysmorphia and social anxiety. We are trained by these standards of beauty to not only hide our flaws, but to blur them out completely.
Rankin has said that this cult of the selfie is “just another reason why we are living in a world of FOMO, sadness, increased anxiety, and Snapchat dysmorphia”.
THE ANSWER
If you really care about how you look stay out of the sun! According to scientists at EPA in the US 90% of visible skin changes commonly attributed to ageing are caused by the sun. With proper protection from UV radiation, most premature aging of the skin can be avoided guys and girls! Don’t smoke, eat healthily and exercise. Researchers at the University of Birmingham and King’s College London have found that staying active keeps the body young and healthy. The Brigham Young University study also found that people who ran 30 to 40 minutes at high intensity five days a week were consistently biologically younger than those who followed more moderate exercise programs, or who led sedentary lifestyles. Oh and don’t take too much notice of unattainable social media – no one looks like that anyway!
By Pia Louisa & Sam Matthews
