Musings on aging

By: Susana Gil del Real

Duty-free store at the Gatwick Airport in London.

What is the first thing you notice about a person’s looks? Is it their luscious locks? Their piercing gaze? Maybe it’s a chiseled jawline, a bright smile, or flawless skin. We all have different tastes, of course, and theories abound on what makes a person look beautiful: symmetry, vitality, confidence, charisma… the list goes on. But one thing that we all have at one point or another is a rather timeless (excuse the pun) quality: youth.

February marks an important month for me—I turn twenty-seven, and my obsession with age has never been stronger. My upcoming birthday used to fill me with excitement and giddiness, but for the last five years or so, I’ve come to dread it. I usually spend the entire month having a small quarter-life crisis (can I even call it a quarter-life crisis after I’ve turned twenty-five?), obsessing over the passage of time and how quickly I’m settling into adulthood. I inspect my face and hair for signs of aging. I look for wrinkles, spots, and loss of plumpness in my cheeks and lips. I moisturize like my life depends on it.

Last year, I bought myself my first retinol product to mark the occasion of entering my late twenties. I’m religious about massaging it into my face, and I use specific techniques to oxygenate my skin and increase lymphatic circulation properly. I’ve also started using Vitamin C to combat fine lines and age spots—I don’t have any, but the influencers out there keep saying that prevention is key. And after years and years of bickering with my mother, she finally found the right thing to say to make me wear sunscreen. It wasn’t the fear of skin cancer that made me start wearing it every day, but rather the fear of wrinkles. 

Over the past year, I have been bombarded with advertisements and videos about products to buy to reduce the toll of time–which skincare ingredients will stimulate cell turnover, shrink my pores, firm up, and hydrate my skin. Tips and tricks on the right kind of Botox to use, what part of the face (and neck, and shoulders) to target, how often to ‘refresh’ it, and how it differs from fillers. I even have a vague preference on which cosmetic procedure I’d prefer if it ever came down to it (facelift! But probably not anytime soon). 

I’m also getting the typical advice on how to stay looking young, and I collect these bits of information and store them in my obsessive-compulsive brain, where they spring up now and again when I’m least expecting it, as if reminding me to never fully let my guard down. I’m sure we’ve all heard these to some degree: don’t smile or frown too hard (or better yet, don’t show emotion at all); drink lots of water; pay special attention to your neck and hands, which are the first to look old; don’t stress out; don’t drink alcohol or smoke (ha!); stay out of the sun. These tricks are as old as time, the kind of advice my mother used to get when she was my age, and my grandmother before her, and yet we still circulate them and swear by them.

I recently heard of face yoga, too, which is a more natural way of keeping your face looking sculpted, using facial exercises meant to strengthen certain muscles that lift up parts of the face that would otherwise sag. The appeal of this is obvious: I don’t have to get injections in my face, and as long as I keep at it consistently, I can look young and beautiful forever. Studies have also come out saying that posture also plays a huge role in the aging process. When we slouch, gravity forces our skin forward and we develop deeper lines around our mouths (those pesky nasolabial folds, hello), our double-chin grows more prominent, and we also get humps at the back of our necks. So sit up straight! Do it right now! 

I’ve been a skincare girly my whole life, so it’s only natural that at one point I’d make the switch from anti-acne to anti-aging skincare. There was never a moment in between where I stopped and felt absolutely at peace with myself. Still, I wonder if starting in my mid-to-late twenties isn’t a bit too soon. It doesn’t help that my younger classmates keep telling me that I look ‘so good for my age’, as if after turning twenty-five I’m supposed to start decomposing. 

I never thought the fear of looking old would consume me so much, but I suppose that our society has brought us up to be this way. We glorify celebrities who manage to maintain their youthful looks as hallmarks of beauty, and scorn those who have aged ‘badly’, or whose cosmetic procedures are not subtle enough. We say they’ve lost their appeal, and lament the fact that they are no longer beautiful. It's a fine line they walk, and in turn we follow suit.

When I was little I used to scoff at women who did everything they could to prevent signs of aging. I told myself that when I reached that age, I would embrace it, not try to hide my wrinkles or white hairs; I would don them proudly. But now that I’m starting to experience it firsthand, I view these women with a bit more kindness. The truth is, it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that our youth, which we often (and perhaps wrongfully) equate with beauty, is fading. 

Perhaps that’s the root of the problem. We equate youth with beauty because it’s attainable to a certain degree until it isn’t. And then we spend the rest of our lives trying to hold on to it, going to great lengths to the point that we spend hundreds, thousands of dollars, distort our faces, and try to defy nature. The truth is, these creams and potions and spells and surgeries will only work to a certain degree. At some point, we’ll have to accept the fact that growing old is a reality of life, and we’ll have to learn to love the bits of us that fall, sink, wrinkle, and sag. 

There is beauty in laugh lines, in white hairs, in scars and spots that tell our life story. Although I want to be the kind of person who looks perpetually young, that people marvel at for looking timeless and unchanging, I also want to be the person who embraces the passage of time, who ages with grace and doesn’t allow her appearance to define her. I fully acknowledge that I write this right after I’ve just applied the third step of my nighttime skincare routine, and that next week I’m going to treat myself to an under-eye serum to even out my eye bags. But I’m getting to the point that I’m starting to accept that time is just a fact of life. Age is a privilege, and I am constantly reminding myself of this whenever I cringe at the thought of my impending birthday. I can do what I can to mitigate the effects of aging, but I can’t turn back the clock, and that is okay. It has to be.