What’s the synonym for anti-aging? Pro-dying? It should be. That way maybe people would get over ridiculous obsessions with the cosmetic industry’s claims that a magical fountain of youth exists in the form of some cream.
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The International Anti-Aging Show comes to Toronto this week, promising all kinds of goodies – including on-site Botox procedures at discounted rates – and, allegedly, thousands of people will be descending on the International Centre near the airport to get the so-called benefits.
I loathe the term anti-aging.It makes my skin crawl and my blood boil.
I consider anti-aging shows to be part of an ideological war against older people. North Americans already live in a youth-obssessed culture that dismisses elders as dispensable, useless pieces of human flesh. Wisdom has no value, while doing everything you can to look like you have none does.
As for sex, are you serious? Based on our pop culture, you get the impression nobody over 60 has sex unless they’re pumped up with Viagra (another product that’ll probably go like hotcakes at the Anti-Aging Show). The film Cloud 9, on screens this week, says otherwise.
These exhibitions have nothing to do with health and everything to do with profit. If health were the priority, organizers might consider the immense stress that the term anti-aging puts on people who are – and this can’t be helped – aging.
Speaking as someone who etches a little powder onto my rapidly balding eyebrows every day, I’m not so totally opposed to a bit of make-up to help the eyes pop out and to give the cheeks a little lustre.
But women (mostly, though the trend is hitting males harder than ever) spend outrageous amounts of time applying over-priced products designed to prey on women’s insecurities. Count on cosmetics companies to be at the show floging those creams the late Anita Roddick, founder of Body Shop, scoffed at. Nobody, she said, should pay over $20 for a skin cream, since they’re all basically the same.
As for the Botox and face fillers that will be featured prominently at this year’s show, don’t believe the ludicrous claims that injections with these products actually slow the aging process as advertised (here, for example). Your biological clock will always keep ticking.
And medical products? Get serious. S. J Olshansky, at UIC School of Public Health, Leonard Hayflick, of University of California, San Francisco and Bruce A. Carnes, of the National Opinion Research Center/Center on Aging at the University of Chicago, are three of 51 scientists who have issued a bold claim that, “Anyone purporting to offer an anti-aging product today is either mistaken or lying.”
The only things that minimize the effects of aging are eating well, exercising and minimizing stress. The Anti-Aging Show plugs these strategies, but really, the focus is on pimping for the cosmetics and plastic surgery industries.
I know I can’t stop people from succumbing to their Botox addictions. And those sniggering ads for erectile dysfuntion products will continue to go strong. I’d settle for a a ban on the term anti-aging. It insults older people.
Personally, I’m not against aging. Because I’m nowhere near ready for the alternative.
