what aging is like

“My face is changing, and I love my face changing and aging,” she told the magazine. But she said, “People think I had plastic surgery. It’s like, ‘What did she do to her face?'” “Oh, I’m just getting old!” she’s like. She didn’t have bad plastic surgery. This is exactly what is happening. “

Theron likely has great dermatologists and great skin care products on their side, but with social media filters being the only thing available to you more than cosmetic injections, Theron is causing significant confusion. has been raised. What does a 48 year old woman look like now? Should every 82-year-old look like Martha Stewart, the recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model? But what about her late twenties and early thirties when her face starts to look more mature? What does “more grown-up” mean when anyone can pay to give themselves the smooth, motionless face of the moment?

In other words, “What is it like to get older?”

Theron’s face isn’t the only thing the internet is paying attention to. During this summer’s press tour, 30-something Jennifer Lawrence (“No Hard Feelings” publicist) and Margot Robbie (“Barbie” star) were frequent skincare TikToks and Instagrammers. It became a topic. While it’s easy to imagine they’re stocked with Hollywood experts and expensive creams and treatments, they’re often suspected of doing more than Botox, lasers, and peels.

Accounts like @celebrity Plastics and @igpopularbydana use their self-taught expertise and tips from anonymous sources to explain the star’s alleged major surgeries and modifications. “She has upper eyelid ptosis ([especially] Under eyebrow fat removal, under eye fillers or other breast augmentation, minimal brow lift, cheek breast augmentation, buccal fat removal, lip fillers, nose reshaping, tip thinning, nostrils Narrow it down,” @igfamousbydana’s post said. founder Dana Omari Harrell said in the lobby.

“I have seen and personally treated several people,” says a New York-based dermatologist who works with high-profile clients and provides skincare advice on TikTok and Instagram. said Shereen Idris. “Most of the time, [the video] is not correct. “

The blend of celebrity culture and the ability to manipulate every casual selfie has created a sense that we shouldn’t look old at all.

The images “distort how people think about aging and what is considered ‘normal’ without citation,” Idris said. “Unfortunately, I blame all these social media filters. It just looks the same.”

“I lost my beauty with age,” added Idris. “People can age gracefully, but people no longer know what it’s like.”

Linda Wells, who founded Allure in 1991 and now edits Air Mail’s beauty magazine Look, lived through the great debates about magazine retouching in the 1990s and 2000s. Fashion magazines have always used retouchers to create a sense of fantasy beyond the real world, but “retouchers have been around since the moment photography was born.” “It’s a human urge,” said Wells, to ask a friend to retake a selfie for you to tilt the to a slightly more flattering angle.

But now, “I think the tools are in the hands of non-professional individuals, so it seems like they have the potential to run wild, and that changes people’s perceptions,” she said. “We all look at these pictures and think, ‘Well, that’s not true, but what is the truth?'”

Undoubtedly, people look much younger now than they did in decades past. Flag bearers may be surreal, like a 50-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow with a toned ab or a Stewart in a luscious SI swimsuit cover.

But look back at the stars of movies in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and even the early 2000s and you’ll see how our health and our own standards of physical maintenance improved. The development of sunscreens, the introduction of retinol and the prescription drug Retin A, and the reduction of risky habits such as smoking have made people look younger. (Idris herself gets such comments frequently. She’s 39, but commenters on TikTok often say she looks a decade or more younger.)

When Botox was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for cosmetic use in 2002, it was intended to soften facial lines. Many patients (and doctors and nurses) now believe that creating a motionless face is the goal.

The frozen look was once widely derided, according to Wells, but now there are Instagram and TikTok filters that shrink noses, widen eyes and fair skin (like wearing a cowboy hat on your head). (Even if the filter is as offensive as ), it has become popular. Young women say, “There is a belief that a lifeless face can never wrinkle. That is, wrinkles can be prevented forever by remaining dead and frozen, which is impossible.”

The Kardashian women are probably the epitome of this style. On their eponymous Hulu show, “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” Kim jokes about her Botox usage, while the sisters speak in monotonous, flat voices and seem as dead as their faces. .

It may have something to do with the surge in demand for injectables during the pandemic. That’s when we had to look into our own faces on Zoom and see our reaction as our colleagues were watching.

“Beauty is always about control,” said Wells. “The beauty world is always aimed at controlling nature, which gives us the myth of control, but nature cannot be controlled.”

Both Wells and Idris said the goal for many women is still to age gracefully, to grow old looking like themselves. Some of Idris’ clients who work in the entertainment industry have asked her not to address issues that could be seen as her shortcomings. “They’ve all seen their colleagues acting weird at some point,” she says. “I think the pendulum is returning to a more realistic, less achievable world.”

According to Idris, it’s often said that the answer to patients’ questions about aging isn’t Botox or fillers. Develop a routine that addresses the quality of your skin tone, not just wrinkles and sagging.

“I think growing old is a beautiful thing,” she said. “If I’m not aging, I’m assuming I’m dead. The goal is to age as beautifully as I want myself to.”