No country for old men (or women)

Photo by Andreea Popa on Unsplash

I’m all about looking our best, being our best. But I’m not in favor of using extreme measures to stay in a place we no longer belong. The problem? We don’t like old people in this country. This is a *No country for old men (and even more so, women.)

Our obsession with youth and beauty could’ve all started with Hollywood, the media, and the billions of dollars put into advertising — there’s a damn lot of money to be made at the expense of making people feel bad about themselves. We’ve seen and heard it enough to believe it — as gospel. As truth. And it’s become ours. 

The message has been received, loud and clear. Aging is ugly — aging is to be dreaded, aging is to be feared, and aging should be thwarted at any cost.

I know this isn’t news to any of you, but if we’re all so aware of this scam, if we’re on to these con men and women who have pulled this over on us, why do we continue to buy into it? We had to quit believing in Santa, the tooth fairy, and the Easter Bunny at some point in time, too. We’re not old dogs, we can learn new tricks — we can change our beliefs.

Do you know what the cosmetics industry brings in each year? In 2016, the U.S. was considered the most valuable beauty and personal care market in the world, generating approximately 84 billion U.S. dollars in revenue that year. This includes skin care, perfumes, cosmetics, but doesn’t include the plastic surgeries, Botox, and other procedures now offered in your friendly doctor or dermatologists office.

I’m not saying we can’t use cosmetics to enhance what we’ve got — want to wear a little lipstick, some blush, some mascara? Go for it. It’s when we feel that our naked, natural, face is unpresentable — we can’t go out without putting on “our face.” That’s not only sad, it is actually quite pathetic.(And FYI, the average age of a model that is selling us “anti-aging”skin cream is 14. We are not going to look like her, no matter how many layers of that “crap” we pile on unless we are 14.)

Besides being injected with Botox and derma fillers, we’ve been injected with copious amounts of fear — fear of being cast aside, becoming undesirable, invisible. 

Fear of being alone, being ignored, being forgotten. And since our beliefs create our reality, our reality confirms that we are only desirable, valuable, worthwhile, while we are young.

We need to start loving and respecting our faces — our bodies, our lives. We can’t stop time, we can’t go back, but we can go forward, each and every day, with self-respect, wisdom, and an “I’m here, this is me, I am worthy, valuable, and important until the day I’m no longer here” attitude — whether you like my thinning eyebrows and wrinkly upper lip, or not!

*No Country for Old Men takes its name from the first line of ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ by William Butler Yeats. The poem’s central message is that in order to be happy in old age we should abandon the world’s more primal pleasures and turn to the spiritual and eternal instead.