I’ve been talking about this a lot lately. I often find myself joking with friends about turning 30 this year, but it’s time to examine whether the humor is actually just masking apprehension.
Examining…
Examining…
Examining…
Nope, no apprehension about turning the big three-oh. It’s a whole new decade of my life! I’m eager to see what my 30s will bring.
But you know (still examining here)…
I’ve seen Nora Ephron’s
I Feel Bad About My Neck in bookstores several times, and have been tempted to purchase the slim little book but never did because I can’t see myself connecting with that fear, at least not yet. And by “that fear” I mean the resulting appalled stare-in-the-mirror I imagine confronting after self-scrutiny, even if it’s a humorous self-scrutiny. I don’t feel bad about my neck, but last month I noticed three more freckles have popped up on it and the buggers prompted me to speed over to Target to buy stronger sunblock. I was apparently under the impression that SPF 50 will stem the freckles tide. Then, I looked up reviews on all those Olay Regenerist products, and it was about that time that I began joking with friends about how I need to start using anti-aging products. So, do I really fear aging?
First, I need to unpack this ridiculous term, “anti-aging.”
How on earth can anyone be ANTI-aging? A quick Wikipedia perusal reveals that obsession with the
fountain of youth legend has been around for ages, so I guess people thousands of years ago were also “anti-aging.” Yet at the heart of the fear of aging I think we’ll find a much bigger fear: the inevitability of facing our mortality. We are not going to live forever. Our bodies and minds will deteriorate, and we become useless in a lot of ways. So we pine for youth, for the chance to continue living in health and vitality. I taught Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” to my juniors last year, and I looked around during their group work one day and wondered whether, a few decades from now, my own students would forget Hawthorne’s lesson about the futility (and downright folly) of searching for the fountain of youth and begin their own hopeless, desperate searches to prolong their beauty and vigor.
But youth is so foolish. Those characters in Hawthorne’s short story only repeated the mistakes of their youth. There is no wisdom to be gained from going backwards. It only takes me a cursory glance over my shoulder at my own youth to remind me how PRO-aging I am. Yet I understand why many people want to fiercely grip youth. In this case, I think the anti-agers just want to prolong living. They love life so much that they don’t want it to end. They want to continue self-reliance, they want to explore the world, learn more things, do more things, be around the people they love for longer. That, I understand.
But unpack “anti-aging” a little more, and I actually think the term has a lot more to do with physical insecurity. The beauty industry certainly capitalizes on that insecurity: Proctor and Gamble, makers of Olay products,
raked in $26.3 billion last year from just their beauty products. That accounts for over a third of their total net sales. Not surprising, since we spend anywhere from $20-$300 on bottles and jars of serums and creams to magick away our lines and wrinkles. In my own medicine cabinet, I have the $38
Philosophy’s Hope in a Jar, so I certainly buy (ha!) into this madness as well.
There’s a line, however, not quite as fine as the one developing on my forehead, between wanting to take care of our skin and absolutely fearing aging. There’s a line between protecting ourselves from the harmful rays of the sun and from free radicals bouncing around in every millimeter of air space on the one hand, and on the other hand waging total war against any indication of getting older. Somehow, we’ve allowed vanity to get the best of us and we’ve allowed movie stars (and those dratted people who airbrush out every micro-imperfection) to dictate the definitions and parameters of beauty. And beauty, we're made to believe, is bosom-buddies with youth.
But take a look at this gal:
Sweet Jesus, ain’t she lovely? Beauty is NOT inherently tied to youth, ladies and gentlemen. For my part, I believe I look a lot prettier now, two months away from 30, than I ever looked before. An old friend posted some high school pictures on my facebook page, and good lord I look like the very manifestation of awkward at age 17 (hey, but don’t we all?). Oh,
not to be 17 again. No, thank you. The skin around my cheeks and eyes are losing some of their suppleness, to be sure, but I happily surrender that if it means I get to keep all this wisdom I’ve earned—positively
earned, dammit—over the years.
And besides, I have everything yet to do. There’s nothing in my past I yearn for. So, if my life meets me toting along freckles and wrinkles, well then let me make some room for all that.
Some room, mind you; I’m still stocking my medicine cabinet with sunblock and moisturizer, don’t get me wrong. I will not, however, buy into the notion that I get any less worthwhile or beautiful with age. In fact, I think the trend is opposite: I feel I have more to give now and, though I growl at these damn stretch marks, I started feeling a lot more secure in my own skin once I hit my late 20s. It’s as if the older I get, the more I actually inhabit my body. And that, for someone who is constantly flitting around, is a very, very good thing.
I have a feeling things will get even better.
