How would you like to age? How do you age?
Two magazines have recently made me reflect, yet again, on the whole idea of ageing. One is Italian Glamour, March issue, which I bought a couple of days ago from a news stand in Milan, after noticing on its cover 'Ageless Beauty' written in large letters, followed by 'i 50 anni sono i nuovi 30' (50 is the new 30). I need to read this, I thought. Gracing the cover was Letitia Herrera, an American top model who is apparently 51 years old. The editors of the magazine felt the need to write on the cover, under her name, that she is actually 51 because in truth, no one would ever imagine so. She looks indistinguishable from any thirty /thirty five year old.
Ms Herrera is a very beautiful woman and epitomizes the kind of ageing that the mainstream media, fashion and the beauty industry by and large are keen to promote. You can grow old but you must look much younger. Age is something you have to wage a war against. Enter a whole system of beauty regimes and maybe treatments such as micro-needling or even home made remedies which sound rather fanciful (ice cubes everyday on your face till they melt) or even the surreptitious use of derma-fillers, and old fashioned cosmetic surgery - the famous model Carmen Dell' Orefice, now 86 but looking infinitely younger than her real age, once said that after all if the roof of your home were about to collapse you would do something about it, the same goes for your declining face.
Frances Dunscombe for The Impossible (instagram repost)
Then yesterday, as I returned to London, I saw the pictures of a bunch of Grey models, all known to me in real life, photographed by Rankin for The Impossible magazine. Those pictures are spectacular, a celebration of ageing. The models were game and were happy to be photographed with all their imperfections, wrinkles and other 'faults', in what could be regarded as unflattering images. Through a visual effect the smoother, manipulated version is briefly superimposed on the unretouched one (on instagram) or, in the print version, half of the face is smoothened, the other half is left unretouched. The make up is very extreme (see images below).
What Rankin says about this latest effort resonates:
"I want to be more about creating the aesthetic where the lines on your face, the way you’ve aged, is positive and something you should be perpetuating and not trying to hide with an app on your phone.”
Sharon Morrison for The Impossible
I don't want my age to be disguised. I am all for keeping healthy, having strong bones and good teeth, good posture and well exercised muscles, but I want my wrinkles and my natural grey hair because I do not want to hide my age. I have made it to this age, why should I be full of regrets about my appearance?
When I was a young girl I was miserable because I was not beautiful enough. I compared myself with the women I saw in magazines and I knew I did not resemble them, my hair was coarser, my complexion far from flawless, I was chubby for a while and then at some point I was skeletal, because I refused to eat and was hospitalised. I have overcome all that. Now I don't need to feel inadequate again because I have aged.
With all due respect for those women who have invested time and money to make themselves look ageless in a classic way, I beg to differ. My choices are different. My inspiration is someone like Benedetta Barzini, whose wrinkles and grey hair have turned her into an icon - she never stopped being one, anyway. She does not care about looking young nor beautiful, yet she succeeds in looking amazing and is loved by fashion designers and brands because she projects her forceful personality and intellectual vivacity.
Today, on International Women's Day, let's vow to reject this form of ageism that glorifies youthful agelessness and only results in feelings of inadequacy.
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