Is Your Skin Aging?

Earlier this week, I passed an upscale shop that displayed in its window a large sign, asking "Is your skin aging?" That ticked me off. "Of course, it is, you idiot!" I muttered to myself, "Everybody's skin is aging, and that cream or lotion or whatever it is you're selling is not going to stop it." That poster was selling a fantasy, the extended, indefinite appearance of youth.

Admittedly, young people, even those with ordinary looks, are attractive if only because their vitality is so appealing. But the young hold no monopoly on beauty. There are beautiful older people too. Clint Eastwood is an outstanding current example. His face has character, just as did the faces of Paul Newman and Katherine Hepburn, who looked terrific until they died. In contrast, the unmarked faces of the young are bland and uninteresting.

A friend of mine, a notable ballet dancer in her youth, now in her nineties, never tried to look younger. She hair turned to gray and then to white, untouched by artificial coloring. Yet she has always looked glamorous. Another friend, who died last year at the age of 97, looked good until the day he died. Of course, my friends were attractive to begin with, and since neither gained weight, their good facial bone structure continued to show to advantage. But even if your looks are nothing special and even if you've gained weight, what's wrong with looking your age?

If a genie appeared, released from the old brass lamp that I started to polish, and offered to grant me three wishes, I would not ask him to make me look younger. I'm not sure what I would ask him for, but it wouldn't be for that.

Just as I wouldn't want to speak a foreign language perfectly, without an accent, I wouldn't want to look like a young man. Imagine that I asked the genie to let me to speak French like an educated Parisian. When I spoke, the French would assume I had all sorts of knowledge that I didn't possess. I would appear dull to them, because I shared so little of the knowledge common to educated Frenchmen my age. Similarly, if I appeared to be, say, 30, young people would expect me to know how to operate all sorts of unfamiliar electronic devices; they'd expect me to maintain a Facebook page, to twitter, and to know the names of the latest rappers. I'd have to wear my tee shirts outside my nonexistent blue jeans and I'd have to throw away my ties. Besides, I could no longer smile at pretty girls without their thinking I'm hitting on them, cashiers would give me a hard time when I asked for a senior discount, my wife would be criticized for robbing the cradle, and no one would offer me a seat on the subway. No! I'm happy to look my age.

Years ago, I read a short story about a beautiful woman who spent a month in a Swiss clinic every summer, undergoing painful treatments to keep herself looking young. One day, she noticed that her hands were those of an old woman. Because she knew that plastic surgeons could not make her hands look young, she killed herself. What a pity! She should have allowed herself to grow old gracefully.

I know what I'd ask that genie: I'd ask him to make people contented to look their age. True, this would entail some negative consequences: plastic surgeons would have to buy smaller yachts, shareholders in cosmetic firms would see their dividends shrink, and the manufacturer of Botox would see its sales fall, but just think about much happier the rest of us would be.