-------The Island
At what age do women think they are over the hill? It’s a question that has troubled some of the world’s brightest minds for years, and now, finally, we have an answer Sit down. Brace yourselves. Take some deep breaths. Women start to slather anti wrinkle creams on their face at the grand old age of 28.
Twenty-eight! One has barely even got a foot on the housing ladder or had a chance to kiss a few frogs by that age. Life, one might think, has only just begun at 28. And if a woman of that age thinks they look ancient, what hope one a decade older? I mean, gosh, don’t they start getting old so young nowadays?
As a woman of 28 years (and 41 days), you might hope that I am grown-up enough not to take such surveys seriously, especially as this particular one was carried out by the people at Olay Regenerist, who obviously have absolutely no interest at all in wanting to make us feel older, younger.
But loath as I am to admit it, I do take it seriously. All the marketing for brands such as Olay and L’Oreal and Nivea has, over the years, insidiously seaped into my skin like the moisturiser I slavishly slather all over myself morning, noon and night, in an impossible attempt to see off a process that is happening all the time.
"Start young",, the magazine beauty editors tell you, and I probably started the moment I stopped being a child. I have gone to bed covered in night cream and eye serum for years. Now I search weekly for crow’s feet. I stand in front of my mirror trying to work out if my breasts have started to sag yet. I look for laughter lines. If do have wrinkles, they will only be from worry.
Never mind that these companies are blatantly selling a lie - witness recent accusations that L’Oreal had whitened Beyonce’s skin in an advert, the same company previously having been rapped on its Photoshopped knuckles for faking Penelope Cruz’s eyelashes in a shoot for a mascara. No matter that I am staring at a model in a magazine advert for some unguent or other who has skin so smooth I am pretty sure it is biologically impossible. I still buy it, and I am not alone.
The average woman spends £483 a year on anti-ageing creams, though there are potions on the market that cost three times as much for one tub alone. Someone, somewhere, is laughing.
Whereas once you bought a simple cleanser, toner and moisturiser, today there is a dizzying array of products available to any woman - and man, actually - walking into the local chemist.
In one, I found hundreds of bottles of products with names such as collagen skin remodeller, age fitness face cream, omega AOX serum, ultralift deep wrinkle Pro x and double plump.
I don’t know what any of it means - nobody does, surely - but blinded by terrifying words and names, we buy it all anyway. And it is not just our faces that must suffer from this anti-ageing onslaught - one high-street brand now sells anti-ageing shampoo and conditioner, despite the fact that your hair is actually dead.
Really, it’s enough to age you. Do any of these creams really make us look younger?
No - they just work by making you feel older. And when you spend your life trying to turn back the clock, you only end up missing what is staring at you in the mirror - and that’s a face which is probably not half as bad as the beauty companies would have you believe.
Daily Telegraph
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