Face looking a bit old? Easy, just airbrush it!

In an idle moment last night, I was leafing through a well-known beauty products brochure and marvelling at the manipulative language employed in its sales pitch, particularly about skin care products.. How do they get away with it? Promises of ‘a more youthful looking you’, ‘youthful looking lips’ and an assurance of ‘a radiant youthful glow’ vied with even more extravagant claims that a skin cream set are ‘anti-ageing heroes’. Another offered an assurance of ‘minimising the visible signs of ageing’. How these marketing merchants love the binary of youth and ageing – and there’s no doubt which is preferable and which is to be  avoided at all costs – and, of course,  the empty promises cost a lot to the hapless consumer. Often too, the pitch is dressed up in pseudo-scientific language, in an attempt to confer respectability on their preposterous claims. 

Then I noticed that one product offered an ‘airbrushed effect’ and another ‘airbrushed looking skin’. Hang on, isn’t airbrushing the ultimate in image manipulation, one that everyone knows presents a distorted, dishonest and unrealistic view of the subject? So now we’re expected to photoshop our faces before we go out in the morning, lest anyone catches us AGEING! And the airbrushed unreality is peddled as attainable – if you’ll just buy our products.   A new low in cynicism on the part of these purveyors of the impossible dream to halt and even reverse the ageing process.

The great shame of these ruthless pushers of illusion and inevitable disappointment is that they are ensnaring younger and younger women into believing themselves inadequate, as they chase impossible rainbows and fail to stem the progress of time. The greatest shame is that there is no shame in the ‘beauty’ industry.

I’ll finish, not with a poem, but a song lyric written by Jarvis Cocker, about ageing – a reminder that we’re all heading that way.  

   

Help the Aged

Help the aged,
one time they were just like you,
drinking,

smoking cigs

and sniffing glue.

Help the aged,
don't just put them in a home,
can't have much fun when they're all on their own.
Give a hand, if you can,
try and help them to unwind.
Give them hope and give them comfort
'cos they're running out of time.

In the meantime we try -
try to forget that nothing lasts forever.
No big deal so give us all a feel.
Funny how it all falls away.
When did you first realise it's time you took an older lover baby?
Teach you stuff although he's looking rough.
Funny how it all falls away.

Help the aged
'cos one day you'll be older too.
You might need someone who can pull you through
and if you look very hard behind those lines upon their face
you may see where you are headed
and it's such a lonely place.

In the meantime we try -
try to forget that nothing lasts forever.
No big deal, so give us all a feel.
Funny how it all falls away.
When did you first realise it's time you took an older lover baby?
Teach you stuff, although he's looking rough.
Funny how it all falls away.

You can dye your hair but it's the one thing you can't change:
can't run away from yourself.

In the meantime we try.
Try to forget that nothing lasts forever.
No big deal, so give us all a feel.
Funny how it all falls away.
When did you first realise it's time you took an older lover baby?
Teach you stuff although he's looking rough.
Funny how it all falls away.
Funny how it all falls away.
So help the aged…….

By Jarvis Cocker

Thank you for reading,

Sheilagh