Hello, my name is Rebecca Rose, and I believe every lie the cosmetics industry tells me.
I never thought I would be a woman fixated on wrinkles or stressed like a hostage negotiator over a few gray hairs. When I was 20, I had the privilege to scoff at beauty ads. “Ha!” I used to smugly proclaim, watching overpaid positively fetal models tout the benefits of anti-aging creams or concealer that “takes 10 years off.” Between fits of mocking laughter I’d ask, “Who wastes their money on such nonsense?”
Twenty years later, I can proclaim with great certainty that I do. I absolutely do. If I could get a catapult and literally launch my money at the beauty industry, I would. I never understood how people get sucked into giving all their worldly possessions to a cult, but if tomorrow Estee Lauder’s ghost told me to move to the desert and live in a bunker, I would obey, all for the tiny sliver of hope of reducing the bags under my eyes.
Aging (much like everything else portrayed in pop culture) is absolutely nothing like how they make it look in movies and on television. Of course no one minds “aging gracefully,” especially if it means you end up looking like Helen Mirren on the red carpet. Who wouldn’t want to look like that? But that’s not what happens. It’s not just a few gray hairs that give you a halo of divine elegance or wrinkles that make you seem “distinguished.”
Wrinkles are nothing. I can handle wrinkles. What I can’t handle is the fact that the skin on the top of my face has decided that real estate values around my chin are a good investment, so it’s time to pack up and slowly make the move down there. Never in any of the 80-bazillion articles on aging in the pages of Allure did anyone bother to mention that after 40, your body decides to start a theme park for weird un-pluckable nose hairs on the edge of your nostril. Everything happening to my face seems like something straight out of a 1950s B-movie, like It Came From Her Face! or Attack of the Weird Patchy Dry Spot on Her Cheekbones That Won’t Go Away!
A few months ago, outrage and shock struck the good non-aging citizens of our society when the media reported that a billionaire was interested in parabiosis, literally injecting the blood of young people into his skin to reverse aging. Pearl-clutchers all over the world were horrified. Honestly, my first reaction was, “Where can I find some young people with cheap extra blood?” By the way, if you are a charitable, compassionate millennial looking to donate your blood to a worthy cause, aka making me look like as good I did in my prom photos, please contact me at this paper ASAP.
Last week I spent $35 on a cream that promised to “rehydrate and nourish your skin with the blast of a thousand ocean tidal waves.” Now, if that sounds suspiciously to you like drowning, you’re a fool and clearly you’ve never experienced an age spot. If you told me tomorrow that if I swam the English Channel, I would have Selena Gomez’s skin, I would dive head first into those waters. (Who knows, maybe hypothermia has some unexpected anti-aging side effects?)
And that’s not where my desperation stops. If a Sephora worker were to tell me that the $27 tube of lipstick they were pitching me magically turned into a DeLorean and drove me back to my 1987 face, I would believe it and buy a case of it. I once paid $58 for a bottle of “age relief water” because the clerk who sold it to me said, “It did wonders for Cameron Diaz.” At this point I’m willing to believe anything.
I have well-meaning friends and loved ones who try to comfort me about my dear, departed face by telling me I don’t “look my age.” I seriously don’t even know what this means. What is an age supposed to look like anyway? Is there a Sherwin-Williams Old Lady chart with pictures of a slowly decaying woman people use to assess this? Do you just hold it up next to someone in her 40s and say, “Yup, this is a perfect match to shade number, ‘Just Turned 42 and Got Her First Crow’s Feet.’” I don’t know how to look my age. Am I supposed to be aiming for a certain number here, or a general, “passed it, sorry gentlemen,” vibe?
Look, when I’m 80, I’m probably going to sit back and cackle at my insecurities here. But until then, I’m going to spend every last available resource I have to fight the atrocities Father Time is heaping on my beautiful face. I will not go gently into that good night, at least not until my skin is dewy and radiant enough to convince the ferryman of Hades I’m not a day over 29.
Rebecca Rose can be found online, ordering that mysterious anti-aging cream the government warned you not to use. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 2, 2017.
