{"id":7673,"date":"2024-05-23T07:40:51","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T11:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=7673"},"modified":"2024-05-23T07:40:51","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T11:40:51","slug":"what-a-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2024\/05\/what-a-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

The luxury skin-care firm Est\u00e9e Lauder just announced a partnership with the Stanford Center<\/a> on Longevity. According to the press release, the goal of this new \u201clongevity expert collective\u201d is to \u201creframe the conversation from anti-aging to visible age reversal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear: \u201canti-aging\u201d and \u201cage reversal\u201d are the same. \u201cAge reversal\u201d is just the latest beauty-industry buzzword for the latest anti-aging trend. Take Kim Kardashian\u2019s announcement of her new luxury skin<\/span>–<\/span>care line, for example: <\/span>in the same article<\/a>,<\/span> she renounced the term \u201canti-aging\u201d and offered to \u201ceat poop every single day\u201d if it made her look younger. I call bullshit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nothing in the universe is getting any younger. But the promise of \u201cagelessness\u201d moves a lot of product, especially in the beauty industry. Companies target ever-younger demographics with the same message: aging is to be feared and fought. And what a market! \u201cAnti-aging is the ultimate capitalist goal, because it\u2019s physically impossible,\u201d observes <\/span>beauty-culture critic Jessica DeFino<\/a>.<\/span> \u201cTo try to anti-age is to be a consumer for life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It is demoralizing to see the Stanford Longevity Center sign on to help a multinational cosmetics company acquire customers for life. Stanford\u2019s stated goal is different: to support discoveries and practices that enable healthy aging. That\u2019s the mission of their new Aesthetics & Culture program, where the cosmetics giant will be funding research activities and post-doctoral fellowships. It must be lot of money. Because the notion that these goals genuinely align\u2014that  \u201cage-reversing\u201d skin care will encourage healthy aging\u2014is, to put it mildly, a stretch.<\/span><\/p>\n

Little of the Sanford Center Director Laura Carstensen\u2019s statement [<\/span>italicized below<\/span><\/i>] about the new partnership holds up under scrutiny<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

We know that aging well involves feeling good about ourselves.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

True. But no one makes money off satisfaction. People who feel good about themselves have made peace with how they look. They don\u2019t invest in expensive \u201cremedies\u201d for a \u201cproblem\u201d invented by an ageist, sexist<\/span>,<\/span> capitalist society: looking your age. The beauty industry feeds and profits from age shame and age denial. Those are polar opposites of what actually make<\/span>s<\/span> us feel good about ourselves: confidence and authenticity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, little research has explored links between appearance and well-being.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the contrary, <\/span>i<\/span>f we\u2019ve learned anything from the body acceptance movement or the proliferation of social media, it\u2019s that a focus on appearance is detrimental to mental and physical health\u2014especially to self-esteem, and especially for women.<\/span><\/p>\n

Extended life expectancy offers us the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding about how people subjectively experience vitality and communicate this experience to others.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um, okay.<\/span><\/p>\n

We believe that skin, as the largest organ, plays a sizeable role in conveying this vitality.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t envy Carstensen for having to come up with this formulation. I can\u2019t say it out loud with a straight face.<\/span><\/p>\n

No doubt this new \u201cskin longevity platform\u201d will yield luxury regimens that enable wealthy people to stay slightly less wrinkly for slightly longer. They are no recipe for enhancing vitality and well-being over the long lives we all hope to enjoy. We age well by adapting to change, not by struggling to stop the clock. <\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine the enormous, <\/span>evidence-backed health benefits<\/span><\/a> of spending those millions on ageism awareness education instead.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The luxury skin-care firm Est\u00e9e Lauder just announced a partnership with the Stanford Center on Longevity. According to the press release, the goal of this new \u201clongevity expert collective\u201d is to \u201creframe the conversation from anti-aging to visible age reversal.\u201d Let\u2019s…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more What a Waste<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7675,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7673\/revisions\/7675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}