Like everyone living on the planet, I would rather not die the kind of death that requires an autopsy. Unlike everyone living on the planet, I have a detailed list of reasons why. While an aversion to being murdered ranks high, there are also, shall we say, more minor indignities. On any given day, my skin is carrying trace amounts of so many beauty products, my toxicology report would read as if Ken Starr wrote it. And I’m old enough to have lived through that reference. Back when I was a teenager, products were toys. I gravitated toward body lotions that smelled nice and masks that cracked when I smiled. But now, in the swan song of my thirties, I have a medicine cabinet brimming with eye gels, face mists, exfoliating scrubs, night creams, day creams, midafternoon creams, every-other-Tuesday creams. Come winter, I use a rose petal serum once foisted on me by an impassioned homeopath. Given how much time I spend applying these various concoctions, it’s a wonder I’m not still typing this from the bathroom.
Do you now suspect you’re in for a polemic about collagen masks? Well, I don’t blame you, but you can relax (and should, because brow-furrowing causes wrinkles). This is about beauty, sure, but beauty as it pertains to youth. For centuries, women wanted to be perceived as beautiful because it was an advertisement for the hospitality of their wombs. Beauty was mostly an indicator of health, of being strong enough to weather long winters on the farm—or wealth, of being rich enough to get your teeth fixed. But beauty as we know it has become a separate jurisdiction.
In theory, this is an empowering idea—beauty for beauty’s sake, not just biological suitability. But in practice? Beauty has morphed into yet another category of concern that women must either embrace or, at minimum, wrestle with. Ask yourself: Would you rather be five years younger but much less attractive than you are now, or five years older but much more attractive than you are now? If you even had to think about it, welcome. You’re in the correct century.
This is why I, personally, tend to avoid conversations about maintaining one’s looks. As a reader, I find beauty articles intimidating. No matter the artistry of their execution or the veracity of their science, they make me feel underqualified to be female, as if I’ve latched onto news of a distant civil war six years in. New technology when it comes to oxygen facials! I didn’t know there was old technology. And as a writer, I am skeptical about chucking myself into bathtubs of viscous goop or getting piranha pedicures for the sake of journalism.
I have no desire to shame women who choose to pour more time and money into their beauty routines than I do. The thing I find hard to swallow is the pretense that any of these treatments or products will cauterize the wounds of time. That any of them will distract me from the realities of mortality. That any of them will, as the creams promise, “activate youth.” At the time of my writing this, I am 38 years old. Time will tell if I need any of my skin-care routines. And by the time it does it will, ironically, be too late.
An assessment of my face as it stands now: Construction projects that began in my late twenties are still under way. Wrinkles are being dug like trenches into my forehead, nose pores expanded, undereye skin rolled thin, lip hairs freshly arrived and ready to party. On the bright side, the chipmunk cheeks that caused me such woe as a child are paying off as an adult. I may no longer look 28, but I do, paradoxically, sometimes look 12. If packing for a trip in a hurry, I feel confident with only face lotion, toothpaste, and deodorant. But this begs the question: Why do I slather all this junk on at home if I don’t really need it?
It’s not because it can’t hurt. A little thingy of undereye gel is $70. Believe me, it can hurt. And mostly, when I look at my face in the mirror, I don’t think much beyond “Yup, there goes my face.” What I really want more than anything is to pause my face. Not to rewind it like a lunatic, but to freeze time like Evie in Out of This World—a show about a half-alien teenage girl that no one born after 1985 has heard of. Call it magical thinking, but I genuinely believe that unless I have made enough proactive decisions or answered enough deeper questions about my life, my face is not allowed to follow suit. It’s just not. Have I created enough, loved enough, been loved enough, accomplished enough, and learned enough to have earned these burgeoning forehead wrinkles? Am I comfortable in my own skin, recognizing it as immutable packaging despite whatever negligible improvements products can provide? In short: Do I have enough behind me to face what’s in front of me?
Forty is a tipping point between old and young, an age of wrinkles and zits, an age where visual cues, financial brackets, and biological age could make one 40-year-old seem 30 and the next seem 50. Everyone’s 40 is different. The other day, I told a concerned 26-year-old not to worry so much about being in the right career, that she has plenty of time to make mistakes. This is not hugely original advice, but it does happen to be true. I can’t fathom telling a 40-year-old the same thing. The stakes are so much higher up here. Is this hypothetical 40-year-old worried about changing careers? About getting tenure? About marrying the wrong partner? About never finding the right one? About the health of her children? You know what? Maybe she should be worried. Four decades on earth is long enough to know what constitutes a stressful situation.
Getty ImagesPaul Bruinooge
Last week, in an effort to make a 39-year-old friend feel better about her impending birthday, I told her 40 would be the start of a new decade.
The chance to shake things up! Why, she is one of God’s little Etch A Sketches. Let us rejoice!
This did not go over well.
“Look at these!” she cried, lifting her bangs and leaning in so that I might get a better view of the lines around her eyes.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” I asked, leaning in. Thin little stems, like baby’s breath without the breath, branched out from the corners of her eyes, encroaching on her temples.
“I don’t see anything,” I said, and sat back.
You could argue that I was doing her a disservice by not saying anything. A response of “Yes, I see of what you speak” might have made us both feel better as well as prevented her from inflicting this test on more of our friends. But she needed to vent. She insisted that her face was becoming a tell, that she didn’t mind turning 40 so much as she minded the assumptions other people made about her turning 40. They were starting to look at her like she should be married with kids and a house and matching towels. Twenty-year-olds were starting to insist she exit elevators before them. Most horrifyingly, the adult she saw in the mirror when she emerged from the shower sometimes felt like a stranger.
I empathized, for her fears were also my fears. But as much as I want to pause time for her, for all of us, I know that’s not possible. Chasing youth with our faces is a surefire way to never catch it. And why would we want to? There is such strength and character and objective attractiveness written on my friend’s face. You could say she looks young for her age because she does look young for her age, but mostly she looks more and more like her. She may not feel it every day, but she should at least feel it when we talk about it like this.
So I admitted that, actually, I could see the lines. She rolled her eyes, reveling in the confirmation. Then she casually floated the idea of needles. I told her what I would tell any woman as young as 40—if your face bothers you so much, invest some of that grown-up cash in better bathroom lighting. And maybe a couple of those masks that crack when you smile.
This article originally appeared in the February 2019 issue of ELLE.
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