I Made a Film to Challenge “Anti-Aging.” Here’s What I Learned.
As we approach a new year, and prepare for the onslaught of corporations telling us how we should improve ourselves in 2021, it seems a good time to pause a moment and think about the words we use to talk about women’s skin.
Recently, I wrote and directed a short, fiction film that challenged the marketing term “anti-aging.”
I worked with a passionate cast and crew to tell the story. Many people donated money and time to help me make the film. For this, I’m very grateful. And I’m am very proud of the final result.
But I quickly learned that taking on an established, successful marketing tactic was not appreciated by all.
How It Started
My discomfort with the term “anti-aging” began a few years ago, when I undertook an overall self-assessment of the ways I was living small.
I realized that much of my self-esteem was being dictated by magazine articles, telling me I should look younger and thinner. For decades, I believed that if I was only prettier, I would be a better person.
Really.
This might be hard to understand if you have a healthy sense of self, but I truly believed that people who were considered beautiful, according to Western ideals, were better human beings than me. Though I acknowledge that as a cis-gendered, able-bodied person with white skin, I’m privileged to have seen some representation of myself in magazines.
In my forties, the pressure seemed, at first, to increase, as I took note of all the ways I needed to “correct” my naturally occurring wrinkles and uneven skin tone— known in the beauty industry as “flaws.” I believe I desperately needed all the “anti-aging” products I could buy, so that I could be a valuable person.
But another thing also happened in my forties. I started to hear about people my age, who had died. Classmates from my primary school — kids I used to play tag with — gone, way too young. I realized that if you aren’t alive, you can’t age. My “aging” skin was simply “living” skin.
It occurred to me that the term “anti-aging” is an affront to the memory of people who died young. Wouldn’t we love to see them with wrinkles and age spots, still here, with us?
This concept sounds simple, indeed. But to accept ourselves, the way we are, we have to overcome some very powerful forces, which I learned about while researching my film.
What I Found Out
1.) According to Forbes, the global “beauty” industry is worth over $500 billion dollars. Owners of these companies need us to keep believing we are flawed, to keep their profits high.
2.) The goal of many cosmetics companies is to hook teenaged girls, with anti-acne products, so that they become brand-loyal, lifelong customers, and later buy anti-aging creams. This horrific fact was told to me, very casually, by someone who works for a large beauty brand. This person thought it was just clever marketing, to tell teenage girls that they look ugly and need to change. But it’s so dangerous, and so wrong. Acne is normal.
3.) Anti-aging products are marketed to women at exponentially higher numbers than to men. All you need to do is have a quick look around your local chain drugstore for evidence of this. (Which begs further investigation into why there a difference between men’s and women’s products anyway?) This marketing trend seems to have started in Victorian times.
4.) The words used on the packaging of skin creams are highly punitive, and encourages consumers to believe there is something wrong with us. “Fix,” “correct,” “erase” and “blur” are the most common words I see on products claiming to be “anti-aging.”
Yes, ERASE is a term used to sell creams to women. What could be the purpose of that, but make us feel unworthy of existing?
5.) We are so brainwashed by marketing terminology that we accept “anti-aging” as a scientific term. But it’s a very murky area. The US Food and Drug Administration classifies most over-the-counter skin creams as “cosmetics” and therefore they do not have to prove they are effective before going on the market.
(Side note: the fact that the FDA website says anti-aging creams are “intended to make people more attractive” is a pretty freaking ageist statement from the US government and shows just how far this marketing terminology has been ingrained in society.)
Oh, I get mad every time I read that….
But mad is better than how I felt before, when I was sad and depressed about my wrinkles.
So I decided, rather than stay mad, I would get even, by creating a new narrative: that “signs of aging” can be celebrated as “signs of living.”
How It’s Going
We made the ten-minute film, Signs of Aging, and released it into the world… first by submitting to film festivals.
The festival circuit is notoriously challenging, and I certainly didn’t expect the film to be accepted into every festival. But I was quite surprised, not so much by the rejections, but by the feedback.
One male festival programmer actually took the time to email me directly and tell me the film was “weird.” Another male programmer said he would screen my film at his festival, but only if I would make several visual changes to it!
Bizarrely, this film, that proclaims women don’t need to change, inspired people to explain to me, the filmmaker, exactly how I had to change, to fit their own ideals.
On the flip side, several fantastic festivals programmed the film and many audiences loved it.
Now, you can watch it on Amazon Prime or here on Vimeo for free, so I won’t give away the plot. It takes place at one of those home make-up parties, where a skin-cream salesperson is shaming her customers for having wrinkles. But one enigmatic young woman challenges her, and finds a way for the others to understand that they are beautiful.
I hope you can take ten minutes to watch it and reflect. I don’t want to bring down the beauty industry entirely. But I believe that we can reclaim our power when spending our money on skin care. Are we buying a cream because we have been told it will “fix” a “flaw”? Or can we consciously decide that a particular product or even procedure, makes our skin feel good, and choose it for our own well-being, not to fit an unreal and oppressive ideal?
Can we let go of fear and shame when we look in the mirror and choose to revel in the signs that we are living?
