We’re used to outlandish claims from the beauty industry, and of them making up problems and products to fix them. So many cosmetics companies (or, at least, their marketing chaps) like to suggest that their overpriced unguents will turn back time. Time travel, if you will, to younger days. Like a Tardis, I suppose, in a jar. (Oi, marketing types, I’ve got an idea for you – Tardis in a tub face goo – takes you back to perkier days.)
Yes, Whovians, I know it doesn’t quite work that way but go with me on this please.
All of the advertising spin seems based in the presupposition that the past is somewhere firmer – and infinitely more attractive. And no one questions this nonsense.
Imagine it. Returning to exams and does-he doesn’t-he anxiety. Spots and squalid student digs. Driving tests and experimental haircuts. Bothering about a bikini body and associated depilation (ok, maybe less so). Worrying if you were good in bed and caring what the cool kids think. Being skint and persevering with stuff you hate.
No thanks. I’ll stick with looking the age I am and enjoying the benefits of knowing who I am and what’s worth bothering about – for now anyway. In any case, the only thing from the past likely to be recreated by buying (expensively) into this crap is the empty purse and vague sense of disappointment.
I’ve got more pressing concerns. The keep-young-and-beautiful-brigade has found something else for us to worry about. It seems the anti-aging industry has decided that we must do our utmost to guard against, um, a certain weariness in the lady garden. You know, drooping clematis and patchy undergrowth. Or something.
Who knew? Vaginal aging is a thing. And it’s a thing we need to do something about. Or else… Well, I don’t know what might happen if you have a veteran vadge. Much the same as anything else, I suspect.
But it makes me cross. There are things we can’t change and things we can. Gravity, time, progress and human nature, for example. Energy is precious, let’s not invent more bullshit to drain our batteries. Instead, let’s embrace silver foxiness – the joy of being alive and healthy for now. The rest of it can fox off.
At least we know now why Cher chose ‘that’ costume, it’s a support system for her sadly sagging underneath bits.