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

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In the dark....with Jarvis

In keeping with the greyness of the day and the hopelessness of the political landscape, my mood is gloomy at the moment. Having written several blogs that amount to angry rants at the world, I determined that this week would be different and something gentler and more positive would flow from my laptop. So here we go with er… ‘dark’, the connotations of which are almost all negative – gloomy, threatening, brooding, mysterious, sombre, evil, funereal, menacing, opaque, depressed….. And yet the dark can be a backdrop, an essential foil to an explosion of scintillating light. Without the stark contrast that the dark sky provides, we could not fully appreciate the beauty of the stars, for instance.

In the 1990s I went on holiday to a farm in Ireland. Fairymount Farm in Co. Tipperary was a magical place in the Irish midlands, with a mystical history and was said to be situated on a ley line. We arrived at night and I have never forgotten glancing up at the dark cobalt sky, which seemed to be brooding just above my head. And, set against it, MILLIONS of winking, twinkling, glittering stars, so close that I felt that I could reach up and pluck one for myself, hold the scintilla in my hand. The magic could be within my grasp.

Image by Tim Hadfield - Canada at the World Fireworks Championship, Blackpool 2014

I’ve never liked fireworks. As a child I used to hide myself away from the staccato gunfire racket of bangers and rip-raps. The house felt under siege from heavy artillery and I was relieved when it was all over. Braver now, I’m possibly regressing to the child-like awe and wonder of fireworks, the explosion of life and colour against the night sky, that I never experienced as a child. Along with thousands of others, we went with our family to the World Fireworks Championship on the promenade in September and were amazed by the winning display by Canada. The grace, ingenuity, exuberance, verve and, above all, colour of the display were magnificent. An inky, expectant sky hosted a cornucopia of dazzling, dancing lights of every hue imaginable.

As dusk descends on Glastonbury festival a palpable air of expectancy and excitement envelops the Pyramid stage, reaching a crescendo as the headliners take to the stage. There is good music, and much more, to be found in the festival’s vast acres and numerous stages every minute of every day, but, as night descends, a particular frenzy takes hold of the fun-loving hordes. Once again, the darkness of the sky facilitates a magical transformation, as the pitch-black stage suddenly bursts into life.

In 1995 the Sheffield indie band, Pulp, found themselves unexpectedly propelled into super-stardom, headlining the Pyramid stage on the Saturday night. Summonsed at very short notice to replace the injured and rapidly imploding Stone Roses, Pulp lit up the Somerset sky and owned Glastonbury with their evocative songs of grubby teenage angst and longing, culminating in the magnificent anthem, ‘Common People’. Jarvis Cocker, fizzing and spitting with righteous indignation and contempt, was a wonder to behold. His spleen had never been more……splenetic!

So there, for me, are a few examples of the bright side of dark. And I’ve managed to steer clear of politics!

Thank you for reading,

Sheilagh

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