How Trying To Stay Young Can Make You Sick
One of the ‘best’ compliments I had after I passed the age of 35 was people saying, ‘You don’t look over thirty, you look twenty something!’ Any suggestion that you look younger than you really are is perceived as a very good thing. Which, is of course, nonsense. Like most people I look my age and occasionally I ‘look good for my age’ if I’ve made an effort.
The ‘worst’ comments/compliments I’ve received have been the ‘you’re looking so much better than the last time I saw you’ ones. What? How bad did I look before??
So what is this obsession with looking young and attractive? It’s not a new thing of course, youth is tied up with strength, positivity, health and happiness. For the ancient Greeks, beauty was a gift from the gods, and they even had a word for it kalokagathos, which meant your beautiful exterior held a beautiful, good person inside. Which, from a modern perspective seems utterly wrong! Talk about judging a book by its cover.
Being young is an adventure that you know will end when you get older, and you anxiously peer into the distance for when this terrible event will happen. That will be when your exterior is no longer young and perky. This is why even young people in their teens and twenties are now having ‘tweaks’, to their faces and bodies to make them look ‘better’, and future proof them for when things start to wrinkle and sag.
Unfortunately, some of these tweaks can be dangerous, especially if done on the cheap or with unqualified ‘doctors’. One example is the ‘bum lift’, which if done wrongly can kill you. Pulmonary embolism, infection wounds and cardiac arrest are some of the worst-case scenarios with this. Plastic surgeons will tell you that augmentation surgery isn’t any more dangerous than other plastic surgery. But surely just the word ‘surgery’ is the alert word here? Surgery is normally done for getting better and staying healthy, not trying to stay young and pretty.
Some of the rush to get bodies plasticised to ‘perfection’ is the underlying insecurity in many Western cultures.
Everything has to be as ‘Daft Punk’ tells us — ‘Harder, better, faster’. If we have wonderfully minimalist homes, sleek cars, super, shiny computers and teeny tiny ear buds, why can’t we be like that too in our new, modified, perfect bodies?
Unfortunately, some tweaks or surgery goes wrong or doesn’t give the ‘hit’ a person was hoping for. And then, as with any addiction, they will need to have more surgery or tweaks and so it goes on. The cost of these modifications isn’t cheap for an ordinary person and the resulting stress and debt would be enough to make them ill if the surgery doesn’t.
From science and experience, most of us know that ageing well requires a few simple things.
Eat well, don’t smoke, exercise, use sunscreen and get a good night’s sleep.
Add a bit of luck from your genes, living in a country that’s not at war and not living in poverty.
None of that sounds very sexy I know, but it’s true!
