The Real Face of 50 - Center for Gerontology

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44 AARP THE MAGAZINE
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BY MARY A. FISCHER
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
BEN BAKER
THE Real
FACE OF
Thanks to SCIENCE AND SURGERIES,
Americans are defiantly fighting
the AGING PROCESS—but some of us are
HAPPY JUST THE WAY WE ARE
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SINCE
TURNING
55,
46 AARP THE MAGAZINE
DANNY
YAMAMOTO
BONNIE SALVO
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKER
“My philosophy is that
beauty comes from
within. In my field, I’ve
worked with a lot of people who are gorgeous on
the outside but their selfimage is so poor. I have a
good self-image—I’m a
good person and respected in my field, so all that
makes me feel good. I’m
feeling okay about turning 53. I’m not welcoming
wrinkles; I’m using moisturizer. If I see an ad in
a magazine that says
something will make you
look younger, I’ll try it.
I don’t know if I’d ever get
[plastic] surgery. Maybe
10 years from now. I’m
not against it, but right
now it’s not a priority.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
DRUMMER
“The only thing that
scares me a little about
aging is general physical
decline. To that end, I work
out. I’m an avid runner.
I started in my mid-20s,
and it stuck. I love to run
outside in the sun, and
maybe in a few years I’m
going to get really wrinkled—but that’s not going
to keep me from running.
I think my ego boost
comes from knowing that
there aren’t too many
people my age who can
run 10 miles and not die
the next day! But I don’t
get off being the center
of attention unless I’m
doing a drum solo. Making
music, that’s my passion.”
Profiles by NATASHA STOYNOFF
ADDITIONAL PHOTO CREDITS ON PAGE 94
I’ve come to view the lines on my face and
neck the same way I think of the weeds in
my garden: an annoyance best discouraged with diligent maintenance. Twice a
day I lather with a $47 “age-defying” collagen cream. Last
year a couple of rounds of Botox injections smoothed the
crease between my eyebrows—but now it’s back, and if
I had an extra $25,000 I might go all the way and have a facelift. But that’s me, a member of the American demographic
that sociologists say feels the most pressure to look younger:
unmarried, post-50 women. I’m also part of another pressured group: professionals seeking job promotions. I worry
that the older I appear, the more likely my 30-something
friends are to lose interest in me, that employers might not
hire me, that men will no longer find me attractive. The pressure further mounts thanks to where I live—image-obsessed
Los Angeles—where “stars” like Kim Kardashian are idolized. On the Westside there seem to be more plastic surgeons
per square mile than dentists.
Even outside L.A., few are immune to our society’s
obsession with youthful appearance, though how we deal
with that varies from the rational—“I can’t stop aging, so why
worry?”—to the ridiculous. No offense to Angelina Jolie, but
her bee-stung lips (which are purportedly natural) fueled a
now passé plastic surgery craze that frequently produced
profiles akin to Donald Duck’s.
Many of us (at least until we’re in our later 60s, the experts say) adopt a proactive “It’s better to do something
than nothing” approach. In 2010, even as the economy
still floundered, American consumers spent $832 million on antiaging skin creams and underwent more than
13 million cosmetic procedures, up 5 percent from 2009.
Though the majority of those who opted for surgery were
female, the number of face-lifts performed on men
jumped 14 percent during that time period. Twenty-eight
percent of the cosmetic procedures performed in 2010
were on 51- to 64-year-olds—second only to the 35- to
50-year-old age group.
“Since looking old affects our social status, we want to
keep passing for younger,” says Toni Calasanti, Ph.D., a sociology professor in Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts &
Human Sciences and coauthor of Gender, Social Inequalities,
and Aging. So we dye our hair, watch our weight, bleach our
teeth, and cover up facial lines with cosmetics or smooth
them out with plastic surgery. Medical intervention has
gone from questionable to acceptable: Half of all Americans,
regardless of income, now say they approve of it.
But some in the no-Botox crowd worry that our fixation
with wrinkles has gone too far and that denying who we
are isn’t healthy. Last year, in an interview with Elle, even
Julia Roberts complained about our culture’s obsession with
Botox, saying, “Women don’t even give themselves a chance
to see what they’ll look like as older persons.”
Our preoccupation with looking younger, say experts
on aging, suggests there’s something wrong with the aging person. “Focusing only on loss implies that individuals
who are aging are less of who they once were, and it fosters
negative societal stereotypes of older adults,” says Debra
Sellers, Ph.D., associate professor in Kansas State University’s School of Family Studies and Human Services.
Others suggest that our pursuit of youthful appearance is
just the latest in a history of appearance-altering practices
among Americans. In the early 20th century, for example,
food shortages were not uncommon, which made being fat
a status symbol: A wide waist showed you had big cash—for
LISA
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SPEECH PATHOLOGIST
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“Turning 50 was quite
a shock for me. I have
teenage kids, and I’m
in the face of people all
day long. I don’t want
to scare them away.
I come from a family
that believes in seeking
the fountain of youth,
and I’m not old yet!
So I tried a little Botox
around the forehead
and a little Restylane
around the smile zone.
When I looked in the
mirror, I thought, ‘Okay,
I’ve got a few more
months of being 49.’
It’s something I’d do
again. I want to carry
a comfortable presence about myself,
and if that means a
little embellishment,
it’s fine.”
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MORGAN WELLS
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
YACHT-INSURANCE AGENT
“I should have been
dead, like, 10 times.
When I was 16, I was in
a car that flipped. And I
was struck by lightning
in 1997—I was on the
bridge deck of a yacht.
I saw a flash, and I was
gone. Then there was
a sound of static and
my stepson, Ian, yelling,
‘Daddy’s dead!’ I came
flying back to the present. My eyes and ears
were hemorrhaging.
I had to have my ears
rebuilt. Now, when I look
at my face and my body,
all these wrinkles and
scars tell stories. I’ve
never been into doing
anything to make myself look better. I know
who I am. I’ve made
it this far, and that’s
pretty great.”
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big meals. In Victorian days, women, to appear more buxom,
corseted their waists to 16 inches. In Colonial times, young
men seeking promotions powdered their wigs to appear
older and more credible because the aged garnered respect:
Only 2 percent of the population lived past 65.
Life expectancy at the turn of the 20th century was 47;
today it’s 78. More than 70 million Americans are now in
their 50s and 60s. Though the paths to looking beautiful and
robust have changed, the motivation remains largely the
same: We want to belong. “These days people are fighting
the perception that they’re old, because they still want to be
considered players in life,” says Calasanti.
The American obsession with youth started in the 1950s
with megastars Elvis, Brando, and James Dean; it intensified
in the ’60s when teenage models like Twiggy redefined glamour. But 1990 was the watershed year when the media began
to sell us on unrealistic standards for youthful beauty. How
so? Photoshop. Manipulated images that erase wrinkles and
traces of fat prompted many of us to feel that aging was avoidable. Over the years, as magazines and advertisers digitally
altered photos of celebrities (such as supermodel Christy
Turlington, who’s only 42) to avoid even a hint of laugh lines,
we began to wonder how we too could have ageless skin.
Thanks to medical advances and healthier lifestyles,
boomers now wrestle with an interesting paradox: They
don’t feel as old as they look, which makes them want to look
younger. After swearing for years that she would never have
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DARLIENE HOWELL
BRYAN MERSHON
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
SMALL-BUSINESS OWNER
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
PSYCHOLOGIST
“People think that if
you’re big, you don’t have
discipline. I definitely have
discipline. I once went on
a medically supervised
liquid fast for a whole year.
I’m a size 24. My family
has always been this way;
I can’t change it unless I
have surgery. I’ve become
something of a fat activist. I eat a healthy diet and
move and don’t let things
hold me up because I may
appear to someone else
as unacceptable. I believe
I’m a beautiful person.”
“I feel at peace with my
looks. Doing the work I do
has helped me get comfortable with how I am.
Also, as a gay man who
grew up in the era of AIDS,
I’m glad to have reached
the age I have, and look
forward to growing older.
I saw so many friends and
acquaintances cut down in
their prime. My sister just
turned 63, and she was
regretful about it, but for
me it’s like, ‘C’mon, I’m glad
you’re alive—you should
be glad you are alive, too.’ ”
plastic surgery, Jane Fonda says she “got tired of not looking
like how I feel.” In 2010, at age 72, she underwent surgery on
her face, neck, and chin. When Stanley Frileck, M.D., a Los
Angeles plastic surgeon, asks his patients what they hope to
achieve with surgery, most tell him that they—like Fonda—
want to look the way they feel. “They are vibrant, active, and
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healthy people, many still with careers,” says Frileck. “They
don’t want how they look to hold them back.”
In our 30s we worried more about our hips and bellies;
after 50 we become concerned with our faces. Our eyelids
begin to droop, our lips get thinner, our skin loses its fullness
and elasticity. It happens on a deep, cellular level—and it happens to everyone. The loss of fat in the face is the most defining change, and it can leave people looking gaunt; the skin
wrinkles and sags without its support. Ironically, for years
the sought-after result of a face-lift was a taut, cadaverlike
look, but these days surgeons often inject fat under the skin
to produce a plump, somewhat childlike result.
The quest to look younger has much to do with class
and race. A preoccupation with one’s looks is still a luxury
of those who have money, and it remains predominantly
a white phenomenon. Research suggests that African
American women (who, as with all people of color, enjoy
skin rich in melanin, which guards against age-related
damage) are more accepting of their looks, but those who
choose cosmetic surgery most commonly elect rhinoplasty
or liposuction. Asians, reportedly in an attempt to improve
their social standing by looking more Westernized, tend
to have eyelid surgery more than most other procedures.
Hispanics seem to focus more on their shape, preferring
liposuction and breast augmentation.
that interfering with God’s handiwork is sinful and vain.
Despite this, we’re still largely an age-obsessed nation—
and we’re not the only one. According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, countries
such as Brazil, South Korea, Hungary, and Belgium
share our fixation. The numbers are significantly lower in developing nations. “You’re not worried about
your face if you’re spending your days surviving,” says
Calasanti. “Part of what makes Western society different from other places is that we have a strong belief in
individual responsibility. You can make changes; therefore
you’re responsible for making them. Phrases like giving up
and letting yourself go are direct moral statements.”
And what you think about aging affects how you age.
Studies show that teenagers who view aging negatively
develop negative perceptions of themselves when they’re
older. In the end, our craving for youthful skin is really
about loss, says Janos Kalla, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist
in Santa Monica, California. “Aging involves being able to
adjust to multiple losses—friends, career, physical losses
like muscle mass and estrogen,” explains Kalla. “Underneath it all is the fear of our own death.”
The hallmarks of successful aging, Kalla believes, are
loving relationships, relatively good health, and a zestful
approach to life. Spiritual teachers such as Eckhart Tolle,
the best-selling author of
The Power of Now, urge us
to create our own personal culture by embracing
values that are important
to us as individuals, not as
consumers of mass media. At 63, Olivia Sabins,
program coordinator in
the athletic department
of Occidental College in
Los Angeles, has zeroed
in on what may be the
most important factor in
accepting the physical
changes that come with
age. “I feel loved,” she
says. “I have good friends
and a husband who adores me and thinks I’m still hot.”
The next age-defying trend will likely involve gene
therapy. Scientists came a step closer to turning back the
aging process last year by using a gene-therapy technique to
rejuvenate worn-out organs in prematurely-aged mice. By
the time such techniques are accepted for human use, most
of us now in our 50s probably won’t care. Statistics suggest
that resignation and acceptance of the aging process kicks
in sometime in the second half of our 60s. At that point,
perhaps, we’ll see the wisdom in Robert Browning’s poetic
assertion that “The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which
the first was made.” 
“I FEEL loved. I HAVE
GOOD FRIENDS AND A
HUSBAND WHO ADORES
ME AND THINKS I’M
STILL HOT.”
But here’s some encouraging news: Though each year
many more of us buy into the antiage craze, polls show that
millions of holdouts care more about being healthy than
looking younger. Those who resist using artificial means
to shave years off their appearance tend to reside in rural
areas, and in the South and Northeast (with the exception of
major urban centers such as Boston and New York), where
tradition-bound populations disapprove of meddling with
nature. Deeply held moral and religious beliefs also play a
role. Buddhists, who acknowledge the impermanence of all
things, are more likely to accept the face-changing inevitability of aging, as are devout Christians, who tend to believe
50 AARP THE MAGAZINE
Get tips and techniques for staying young
in body and in mind at aarp.org/bodyimage.
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STELLA
MORENO
ANTHONY, NEW MEXICO
SPEECH PATHOLOGIST
“Two weeks after
I had my son, I turned
41. Two years later
we adopted our
daughter from China,
and I stopped coloring my hair. The first
time I saw the gray,
I thought, ‘Oh, this is
really different!’ But
my husband encouraged me every step
of the way. I would
get stopped with
my little ones, and
people would say,
‘Are those your
grandkids?’ But simplicity has become
very important to
me. I just want to be
healthy for my kids
and set a good example. I don’t want to
be fixated on outside
appearance.”
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