My name is Get Lippie. I'm 45, and I’m tired. I’m tired of “older” being beauty industry shorthand for “ugly”. I’m
tired of being nagged about my age by the products I use. I’m tired of
constantly reading the same old (ha!) messages all the time which imply that
the only quality women have worth venerating is “youth”. I’m tired of
toothpastes and deodorants, and foot creams and handcreams, and shampoos and
lipbalms, and practically everything else on the planet using the message:
“don’t get old, you’ll be worthless (bitch)” to create panic and stimulate
demand for products.
As I get older, it (the messaging) enrages me more. Because it’s a
lie. I repeat:
It. Is. A. Lie. When I was younger, I was terrified
of old age – turning 30 was horrific for me, I was “officially old” according
to the adverts, and the media I was consuming, and I spent the last couple of
years of my twenties alternately panicking at the thought of being over the hill,
and raging about how “unfair” it was that we have to get “old”. I was a
fucking idiot. Two years of my life wasted panicking about an arbitrary
deadline imposed entirely about someone else’s idea of how women “should”
look. Young. And worrying that being over thirty (and worse, being
over thirty and single) is to be a waste of flesh. We use old in the
beauty industry and media to scare people, to create panic, to force
people not into making peace with their age, but to worry about it. And
as the end result of that fear, that worry and that panic created by the beauty
industry itself is (besides, of course, them offering the “cure”) is to make
women hate themselves. To remove the comfort of liking the skin that one
is in. Worse, to make being comfortable in your own skin seem …
incongruous. Eccentric. Insane. Freaky.
Women start to panic about being old in their late teens. I see it
on Twitter/Instagram and Facebook all the time, young, beautiful, intelligent,
humorous women worrying about turning 20/25/30/35 whatever, “this time
tomorrow, I’ll be old …” because all the messaging we have in the media is that
to be old is to barely be a woman at all. It’s depressing. And
heartbreaking. And infuriating that these women are both beating themselves up
over an arbitrary number, and writing off the hundreds of women they know who
are older than them as “worthless”, however inadvertently. Anti ageing
products fuel this panic in younger women, and
infuriates some of us
elderly bitches to boot.
Older women are not ugly, or worthless or useless. We are, however,
invisible. Oh yes, there’s Jane Fonda, and Helen Mirren. Well, yippee!
Bully for them. But for every Jane Fonda or Helen Mirren or Judi Dench,
there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, oh sod it, MILLIONS of …
ordinary … women in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and even beyond who will
never be Jane Fonda, or Helen Mirren. Don’t even want to be those
people. Don’t care about them. There are millions of us, but
where are we properly represented in the beauty industry? If you’re not under 25, or
haven’t had the genetic blessings (and good cosmetic surgery) to still be
considered a (freak!) sex-symbol in your sixties, then you don’t exist.
We use teenagers without a line on their faces to sell wrinkle-cream to older
women, then photoshop the hell out of the pictures because even being young,
increasingly, isn’t good enough, you also have to be pore-free, line-free, and
smooth, smooth, smooth like an egg, only without the personality. The
more we make the images behind the products unreal, the less people will
believe the claims for your product. I am never going to look like the
woman in the advert because I used a £35 facecream, and I don’t care how much
science went into the pot. I never,
ever will. And don’t use a
sixty-something “sex-bomb” in a patronising attempt to appeal to “older”
ladies because I won’t look like them, either. My mum might though.
I don’t want to be younger,
I want to not be scared of getting old.
I want my products to stop feeding that fear. I want adverts to stop
telling me that "old" women need to be less like themselves to be
acceptable. No face cream (or deodorant, or toothpaste, or even
bloody foot cream for that matter) is going to stop me being the age I am.
I want to be the best me I can be. I’m happy looking like me, for all I resemble an over-stuffed sofa with a smacked arse in place of a face. Frankly,
the younger, thinner, and inarguably much better-looking me was an even bigger
pain in the behind than I am now – I don’t think I’d like her that much these
days, and I really didn’t like her all that much at the time, now I come to
think about it.
Ageing is a process. We’re all of us getting older, right from the day
we’re born. It’s inexorable. You’re going to be “ Let’s make the
inevitable products required to make ageing less of a chore (because it’s
tiring enough just
being old without added worry about
looking
old), and make the message behind them positive, not negative.
Beauty doesn’t need a time limit.
... and
breathe ...
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