Calling Products “Pro-Aging” Doesn’t Change Their Message That Aging Is Bad
By: Shanna Loga
Tags: Midlife, Beauty, Media Criticism, Anti Aging, Self

While “anti-aging” has become more taboo as a term, it’s become more visible as a force for social stratification. The anti-aging industry downplays the role of genetics and lifestyle choices like diet and exercise in determining how quickly we age, though scientists suggest that physical aging is primarily determined by these factors. Based on genetics, who’s considered young-looking for their age is arbitrary.

There’s a simple reason the industry ignores this: if they acknowledged it, they would have nothing to sell us. Instead, the industry claims their products can help anyone look younger — whether or not exercise, good genes, or other factors are accessible to them.

Aging becomes about who can afford to stave it off.

There’s also the fact that people with more resources have access to the more expensive (and presumably more effective) products and procedures. Aging becomes about who can afford to stave it off.

But it’s not all just about actually looking younger. The anti-aging look itself—which is a separate thing from simply looking younger than your age—has also become a signifier of elevated status. Take Kim Kardashian—who, to me, looks 40 (her actual age). Her appearance doesn’t say, “I’m a college student;” instead, it says “I can afford for my skin to look like wax." You’ve probably encountered someone in your own life with the expensive anti-aging look: imagine a 50-something, upper-middle-class executive with dyed hair, skin inflated by injectables, foundation erasing every pore, teeth white like the reflective strips on traffic safety cones, and sinewy body made tight through yoga and pilates. She looks what people would consider “good for her age,” yet it’s clear she’s in her 50s. That look is a commodity. She’s signaling that she has the time and resources to battle age. No matter if that battle has left her looking like “a purse that melted in a car accident” (thank you, Amy Schumer).

In contrast, a 40-something elementary school teacher who’s raising her family on a single income and spends her extra dollars on school supplies rather than skin products would find the products and procedures required to achieve this look are out of reach. Instead, she wears the wrinkles, grey hair, and extra weight of someone who people might assume can’t afford to do better. In reality, her priorities are elsewhere, as are those who do not have the means or headspace to worry about warding off age.

There are those who walk the middle road — skincare routines with a mix of drugstore products and a few pricier items from Sephora, hair dyed at home and cut in an age-appropriate style at a reasonably-priced salon, sporadic exercise routines, and C+ diets. These flesh-and-blood women follow societal standards about what a middle-class woman of a certain age should look like — like she’s trying, but not too hard.

No matter what group we belong to, all of us are in a stalemate, as few people are willing to leave the battlefield. We all want to look good, which has become synonymous with looking young. We all wish society were accepting of aging, but who wants to make the first move? As Amanda Hess of the New York Times writes, “We nod and agree that we should embrace our wrinkles while quietly understanding that none of us, individually, want to be the one who actually looks old.”

There are a few exceptions. I have friends who work in academia, engineering, and holistic healing — fields of the mind and spirit. They seem comfortable wearing their ages, perhaps because looking older in these environments is considered less detrimental. I’ve also found that for many people, the older they become, the less likely they are to cling to youth — probably because it seems more and more unattainable.