How To Look Ten Years Younger

How about a good rant? I haven’t had one for a while and my initial intention was to set the world to rights every Monday. Well, there’s ninety minutes of Monday left so I don’t see why I shouldn’t bother you all with my opinions.

The topic of this rant, as you’ll no doubt have guessed if you’ve read the title is How To Look Ten Years Younger. It’s a program on some two bit satellite channel, but this rant isn’t all about that. It’s the general obsession at the moment with not looking your age.

When you’re in your teens all you want to do is look older. Then you have maybe five years respite before you’re expected to want to look younger than you are. So, are we meant to believe that people are only valuable between the ages of twenty and twenty-five? According to the propaganda we’re fed day in day out you can only be successful between these ages, you can only lead a fun and fulfilling social life between these ages and you can certainly only be desirable between these ages.

Hmmm, given that most people live another sixty years after this time period that’s all a bit depressing if you ask me. There was a time when the older you were the more respected you were. Your years and your wrinkles were to be shown of with pride as it showed the life you’d led. Now when you get wrinkles you must iron your face immediately or, shock horror, someone might actually be able to tell your age. Old people are at best a figure of ridicule and at worst seen as a drain on society. The views and opinions of those in their eighties are dismissed with the same patronising simper as the demands of a five year old child.

But why? Well, clearly it’s our old friend the homogenisation of beauty rearing its head as a start. People get easier to control the narrower the criteria identified as acceptable gets. You can only be beautiful for five years. That seems pretty narrow to me.

Another theory is that we live in society that needs to hold up unattainable ideas and lifestyles in order to project a fake sense of unity and, again, to keep as many people under the thumb as they feel they can get away with.

Or maybe it’s just a fear of death.

I don’t know. I'm just speculating. All I know is that, whatever your age, you should be respected and you should walk with your head held up high. If you’re sixty show your wrinkles with pride. If you’re eighteen don’t worry because you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Enjoy it and don’t give crow’s feet a second’s thought. Don’t ever want to be ten years younger, just be thankful for all the good times you’ve had in those past ten years.

Peace and love x