No one enjoys getting older - but it’s better than the alternative

The theme of women and the hard time many of them have with ageing is explored in the much-acclaimed film The Substance, which has just been nominated for five Academy awards.

Even though it descends into exaggerated grotesque horror, the statement it makes about the lengths some women will go to, to remain young-looking is scarily close to reality.  However, for most female viewers, myself included, perhaps the most hard-hitting scene starts off very mundanely, when the main character played by Demi Moore is getting ready to go out on a date. She looks critically at her own reflection, studying every feature and keeps altering her make-up. She becomes increasingly unhappy with the way she looks, glaring at herself with an angry, accusing stare, until she finally ends up smearing her lipstick and mascara, almost clawing at her own face in self-loathing and frustration. In the end she doesn’t leave the house at all, curls herself up in a ball of misery and never goes out on that date.

That scene hits home because we’ve all been there: Getting ready to go out, trying on one outfit after another, not liking the result of our face and our figure and suddenly our mood turns dark and we decide we don’t want to go out after all. The more we look at ourselves, the more flaws we find and the more judgemental we become. Women cannot catch a break because we are bombarded by constant images of perfect faces and equally perfect bodies with the subliminal message that this is how we “should” look.

In this Insta world we live in, we have never photographed ourselves as much as we do now, and there has never been so much emphasis on the “me”. No wonder so many use filters before posting a selfie, in order to achieve a similar perceived perfection. I can understand the temptation of those tricks which magically wipe away pesky wrinkles and saggy skin, and yet I find it sad because it says so much about how dis-satisfied some are with their own image.

There are days when the pressure to keep looking as we did in our heyday is often hard to ignore. In our superficial, stay-young-looking-at-all costs, selfie-obsessed world, clinging to youth has not only become the mantra in most of the Western world, it is also a very, very lucrative industry. Fillers, botox, collagen, you name it, there is always a new injection or a potion which promises to give you back that elusive bloom of a young face. Playing on women’s insecurities is a great way to get rich.

But as the years and birthdays roll by, it is not just the numerical age or our appearance which makes us "feel old" but the way society perceives aging.

This was brought home to us with a thud during the pandemic when, suddenly, those over 65 were told to stay home. And yet, 65 is nothing really (at least that's how it seems now from where I am standing; if you had asked me when I was 30 I would have said, yes, 65 is old). I remember the shock and outrage felt by those in this age bracket who considered themselves healthy and vibrant, and I did not blame them one bit. It was probably the first time in living memory that there was an almost societal segregation where the young and the old were treated differently.

During that eerie time in our lives, it was also an unkind slap in the face that anyone over 60 was labelled as “elderly’ by the health promotion department, complete with a cartoon figure of a little old lady with her white hair in a bun, granny glasses and wearing a shawl, while the grey-haired man was similarly depicted, hunched over and wielding a cane. Gee, thanks so much, those who were 60+ muttered to themselves. What a great way to make us feel ancient and decrepit.

It has been almost five years since COVID threw us into a tailspin of worry and concern about our collective health, causing us to fear an invisible, out-of-control virus and constantly anxious any time someone in our vicinity so much as coughed or sneezed.

Along with the lingering effects of long COVID and the lasting repercussions on some people’s mental health, I think another aspect of those times which has remained has been the stigma of ageism and the persistent mis-use of the word “elderly”.

Aging, like the proverbial death and taxes, is inevitable, unless of course there is tragic loss of life at a young age which brings its own immeasurable sorrow. So yes, while getting older has its downside (or, as Cher so succinctly put it, “it sucks”) – what is the alternative? We all know the answer to that one.

Marilyn Monroe, Lady Diana, James Dean, John Lennon, Ayrton Senna, JFK – there are a whole slew of famous people who will always be frozen in eternal youth, etched in our memories as they were at the time of their untimely death in the prime of their life. We will never know what they would have looked like as older people (although AI makes it possible to create an approximation), so they will remain forever young.

For the rest of us, that is not an option. We have all had those moments when we wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and recoil in alarm, thinking, who the hell is that? Or else we do a double take because the reflection looking back at us is the spitting image of our mother (or father). The reality of our age is also often brought rudely to our attention when speaking to the younger generation who have never heard of the songs, films or actors we assume “everyone” knows. If you have ever seen those YouTube videos of someone in their 20s reacting in awe as they listen to the BeeGees for the first time, the passage of time will hit you like a runaway train. ‘Released 48 years ago? There must be some mistake!’ Even more depressing is when teenagers tell you the year they were born and you realise you probably have certain items in your wardrobe which are older than them.

Ultimately, however, as long as we are relatively healthy and can live an active life, getting older does not need to be so melodramatic. It also needs to be put in perspective because there are definitely worse things in life.

When it becomes our foremost preoccupation, it is a slippery slope which can lead to an addiction to cosmetic surgery, the results of which are not always an improvement on the original.

Obviously, there are also days when I think ugh and wish I had a magic wand. But that is also why God (or maybe it was the Egyptians?) created make-up.