by Nick Chapman
I have just returned from a thought-provoking stay with one of my nieces and her children. We shared lots of laughs, reminiscences over coffee and doughnuts and lively, late-night heart-to-hearts, but what it's left me really thinking about is the off-kilter way we look at age and ageing
We took my great-nephews to their local park where brand-new and exciting climbing frames, swings and a roundabout have won their devotion. Said roundabout flung the youngest boy off, after being provoked into furious revolutions by his wickedly grinning elder brother. He would not be comforted and was eventually told by his mother not to be such a baby. Through his tears, he managed, "Mummy, I am a baby though!" The poor wee lamb has just turned four.
Whatever age we are, we are frequently told that we should be acting as though we are another. When we are young, we are under pressure to grow up. When we are grown up, we are under pressure to look, act and feel like a teenager!
There is a season for all things. The Bible tells us so, songs have been sung and prose has been written on the topic. Even if we have not really thought about it much, most of us realize that there is a time and a place for everything. Except when it comes to ageing, apparently. We seem to be expected to stay young forever, or at least do our utmost not to look, or act our age. Why? What is so wrong with being and looking the age you are? Other societies value and cherish their old folk. Mature people are revered as 'Elders' and looked up to as seniors. They are respected for the positive value of their experience and wisdom and are therefore not expected to undergo the indignities that accompany the struggle to look 20 years younger than they are. They are not made to feel inadequate, or as if they are failing in some way, because they are unavoidably leaving their youth behind. It is for that very reason that they are valued.
In our society a great deal of thought, energy and let's not forget cash, goes into attempting to roll back the years. We desperately try, in various and ever-complex ways, to cover up the evidence of advancing age, despite the many advantages of maturity accompany that ageing. Heaven forbid though, that any of the maturation process shows on our face.
I am (only!) 'middle-aged' but I am surrounded and bombarded by people telling me how I ought to still feel and act as though I'm 20, (which thankfully, I don't) or, if I spend just £87.20 each month on this lovely new cream containing mega-prokylite enzyme and polysincaloptic acid blended with fruit pulp from the rare Toki-Toki plant that only flowers at midnight once every sixteen years, I can also look as though I am, too. If not that, then great-great-grandmothers are boasting wildly to me from the television or Woman's Hour about how youthful and carefree they are, having just divorced their 89-year-old husband, and as proof tell about how they throw themselves out of aircraft, swim shark infested waters, trek through the Gobi desert for 18 months with only a camel for company or are planning a trip to Alaska, where they intend to drive a team of eight huskies 120 miles along a glacial ridge stark naked. OK, so I might be exaggerating slightly, but you get my drift.
I led a very active, quite adventurous and sometimes, admittedly, a bit of a wild life as a youngster. But those days' behaviours, and the motivations for them, are behind me and of their time, and now I'm quite content to do things that are less risky, less likely to lead to cardiac arrest or end up with me dying of shock or fright or needing to look into the cost and effectiveness of incontinence pads.
Why is there such pressure on us to buy the appearance of youth and why do we fall for it hook, line and sinker? Two reasons, both sadly very powerful human drives. Greed and vanity.
The retailers, be they multibillion-dollar cosmetic companies, the rag-trade, the providers of adventure holidays for the over 50s, would not have their greed satiated (not that it ever will be) if it were not for our vanity.
Of course, advertisers exploit other human insecurities to sell products and earn their huge fees. Our fear of the grim reaper is one - "See, I'm bungee-jumping off the Sydney Harbour Bridge and I'm 92! Watch me cheat death!" Sex of course is another. The whole thing boils down to the people who want to sell us something focusing on our natural vulnerabilities and exacerbating them, and we, the vain and insecure public, rushing out to buy their 'cures' and give them our money, often without even realizing we have been hoodwinked.
Well, I for one have made a firm decision to rein in my vanity spending. After all, I am not a complete fool, how hard can it be to resist the pressure to part with cash for treatments, and therapies, that, let's face it, are often a con anyway.
Oh, hang on, the postie has just dropped off my 'Hollywood-White Ultra-Bright Teeth Bleaching Kit' - gives me time to 'rejuvenate my smile' before Friday's gym session. (Half-price membership for the over 50s). Sorry, now what was I saying...?
Copyright © Nick Chapman 2010
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