The Antidote to the Anti-Aging Scam

On being grateful to be alive

This little Substack hit 5,000 subscribers this week! Thank you! I thought I’d celebrate by sharing a little piece about gratitude, the pressures of perpetual youth, and wanting something more. I’m hoping to share more pieces like this for my Substack subscribers in addition to This Week’s Miscellany and weekly Jane Austen reflections. If you’re not a subscriber it’s a great time to subscribe:

The millisecond I turned 35, the algorithm started sending me ads for anti-aging serums, weight loss apps, and botox. I’m now 37 and the push to beat the effects of aging is relentless. I asked around and this seems to be a universal experience for women over 30 who use the internet. At every turn someone is trying to make money from the insecurity that you don’t look 22 anymore. And you should look 22, they say. You should look 22 forever! 

But it doesn’t land right with me. I’m just so grateful to be 37. I’ve given birth to four children–and the pregnancies weren’t easy. I’ve survived a global pandemic. I’d had two breast cancer scares (which, praise God, turned out okay). I love being alive. And while I’d have to be superhuman to be untouched by the pressures of the culture of perpetual youth, I’m equal parts ornery about it and too full of gratitude for life to raise the white flag. Why should I buy products that promise to make me appear younger than I am? Why can’t I look my age? 

There’s no denying that it’s strange to watch oneself age—to notice that the face in the mirror looks different than I remember it looking. But if no one normalizes the reality of aging, the pressure just increases for all of us. I don’t want that for my daughters. I don’t want that for anyone. 

I love the lines that are slowly being etched on my husband’s face. I love the grey coming in at his temples  and his beard. It’s the face I love most. It is preposterous to imagine urging him to dye his hair to cover the grey or smooth out his laugh lines with botox. It’s not the face I met when I was 15 and he was 16 that I love, it’s his face that I love. Then, now, and always because it’s his. But he has to patiently reassure me that he feels the same about me as I age–and why should that be?

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Sonnet 116, Shakespeare

To be tempted by the siren song of perpetual youth is not a crime. We’ve all been there. This isn’t a judgment on women with extensive skin care routines (although I’m too lazy to join them). Nor is it a condemnation of those who have botox treatments (I’m too cheap, to be honest).

But what if you don’t want to participate? If you haven’t the time, money, or inclination to devote energy to perpetual youth? Can we just relieve some of the unbearable pressure women face by being willing to grow old? By not feeling like we must hide it?

My friend Rachael was almost exactly my age when she died of cancer on Sunday. The opportunity I’ve been given to age and gain grey hairs and crows feet and watch my children grow up is a privilege, a gift. I don’t want to waste it obsessing over my waistline or the consequences of almost four beautiful decades of life on my face. I wonder if the revolutionary antidote to the anti-aging scam is actually incredibly simple: gratitude to be alive. What if we’re so full of joy with the gift of life that we are simply too busy to grieve no longer looking 22?

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Psst! Today my first book, The Grace of Enough: Pursuing Less and Living More in a Throwaway Culture, is available on Kindle for $0.99! In five years, I’ve never seen it on sale like this so grab a copy while you can.