Anxiety, Ageing and Algorithms

I know all the things that are wrong with me, from the top of my thinning hair to the toes on my deformed feet. I have forehead wrinkles, crow’s feet and concentration lines that the snake-oil salesmen call my “eleven”. My lacklustre eyebrows and eyelashes require serum. My skin lacks elasticity. My jaw is plagued with deep labial folds, and marionette lines outline my sagging jowls. The neck has become crepey and the chin is disappearing. Arms that flap their untoned triceps are bingo wings. My rounded stomach is a meno-belly. My cleavage is crinkled and my ass is drooping. I need cream for my cellulite and a foot spa for my puffed ankles and unsightly bunions.

The algorithm on my social media feed criticises every aspect of my ageing body. My whole self is flawed and the way I try to fix those flaws is also wrong.

Still using box-dyes? – Ugh!

That’s the wrong sort of collagen!

Yoga, but for your face…

Makeup that doesn’t settle into your wrinkles…

Not walking enough in the wrong kind of shoes.

You’re walking too much and ruining your shonky joints!

Adverts are dressed up as serious articles, just to let me know that there is a science to ageing and no previous generation has ever got it right. And I’m about to get it wrong too, if I don’t do this, do that, do the other. I must spend my cash on a new supplement, red light treatment, Korean beauty masks, a brain enhancing puzzle app.

On and on it goes.

I want to laugh at the petty charlatans – I poke fun at the most outlandish – earrings for weight loss anyone?

I have tried to curate my feeds so that I can see pictures of cats being goofy. Birds soaring in the sky. I want pretty mid-century fashion and Art Nouveau architecture. I follow book and movie reviewers for recommendations to bring me creativity, joy and messy ideas.

The adverts, however, interrupt my attempts at escape. They are there from the moment I wake up to the time I set my alarm at night. They follow me around in the miracle of my smart phone. Grabbing my attention, popping up, startling me, fooling me. Some mornings, even before I have had my breakfast, I have had a lecture about how to stop my genitals drying out. Instead of kittens, I get AI/filtered images mocking me with what I could've won.

The snake-oil salesmen know I am 57, and they use this fact to make sure that I can't be happy. They need to sell me my disappointment. They need me to catastrophise. They want me to believe that a firmer chin will make the problems of the world go away. They need me to see anguish, bitterness and mistakes, when I look in the mirror.

I’m old enough to know that the problems of the world are not connected to how I look. A young face and a firm body didn’t make my 20s easy, and their pursuit now won’t solve ingrained inequality and greed.

Sadly, though, my age doesn’t protect me against the anxiety of the constant bombardment of advertising. I wish it did. I wish I could say to younger women, there will come a time when you’ve run out of all the fucks you are ever going to give. Maybe there is a time, but I haven’t reached it, yet. I think honesty is better. Capitalism doesn't have an age limit on exploiting vulnerability. I haven’t stopped comparing myself with commercial perfection – even though I know it is fruitless. I’m not immune to the gentle, constant pressure that I’m missing out. I allow my peace to be disrupted by the bully in my pocket. I keep the phone on silent, but somehow the videos still scream at me.

My hope for today is that by writing this down, it will be enough to remind me that I’m more than my face. And that ageing is a privilege too many people don’t get to enjoy.

One day, I might learn to wear my wrinkles with pride, as a life well-lived, away from the noise.