Bryony Gordon
Growing old isn’t a challenge – it’s a gift
Wrinkles show how lucky we are, how fortunate we have been to weather the tide
The latest craze to sweep social media involves people posting pictures of themselves as they might look in old age. Thanks to something called Faceapp, anyone with a smartphone and a willingness to apparently share their data with the Russians can now take part in the “age challenge”, which essentially involves adding a filter to your face to make it look elderly. It was spearheaded by celebrities such as Courteney Cox, Gordon Ramsay and Heidi Klum, who have this week offered us a glimpse into an alternate reality where Botox, fillers and plastic surgery do not exist. Using filters to show the truth? Social media truly has eaten itself.
There are concerns that the app, owned by a Russian developer, could be a global security threat, given that it requires users to allow access to all of their photos. In the US, the Democratic National Committee’s security chief, Bob Lord, sent an alert to all campaign staff for next year’s election, urging them to “delete the app immediately”. While in this country the data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, has announced it will be investigating the privacy issues: “We are aware of stories raising concerns about Faceapp and will be considering them.”
My biggest concern about the app, though, is not for global cyber-security, but global sanity. How have we got to the point where wrinkles and lines and looking old are seen as something we must challenge ourselves to face?
There is, of course, an evolutionary element at play here that has existed since the
year dot – youth symbolises fertility and fertility symbolises abundance and usefulness, and once you’ve lost it, well, you may as well be put out to pasture and wait to die (only joking!). But it used to be that you feared getting old as you hurtled past middle age, whereas now, thanks to filters and apps like Faceapp, people fear getting old before they’ve properly reached adulthood.
On this year’s Love Island, for example, much has been made of the fact there is a contestant who is 28. Twentyeight! I mean, it’s astonishing they haven’t installed a Stannah stairlift in the villa to help her get around. And I keep hearing young people in their twenties joke about “adulting”, as if it were a course at university, and not just a normal thing that happens to people as they progress through that crazy thing called life. And actually, “adulting” almost is a course, given that last week Damian Hinds announced the launch of workshops to teach school and college leavers about independent living.
The anti-ageing movement recruits ever-younger members, so that girls in their early twenties now routinely have Botox, and an army of adult babies walk the Earth. I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live in Neverland, surrounded by Peter Pan and his crew of Lost Boys (and girls). It’s creepy, it’s concerning and it’s actually completely counterintuitive. Because here’s the thing I am realising, as I stare down the thrilling barrel of 40 (which is not that old. Not at all). Getting old is a good thing. It’s brilliant, because it means you have stayed alive for another year – and that is something to celebrate, not do down.
Not everyone is afforded the privilege of getting old. Newspapers are filled daily with examples of people gone too soon – people whose loved ones would give anything to see their faces wrinkled and “ravaged” by time. I think we can forget, in the daily madness of work and household bills and Brexit and social media challenges, how absolutely wondrous life is. To have it at all is to defy the odds, and each day that we hang on to it is a bonus.
A dear friend of mine died recently, after a long illness. She was 40, and leaves behind a husband, a 10-month-old baby and a four-year-old son. Her passing is a tragedy I struggle to comprehend, one of many being experienced by families across the country right now: by the parents of Sam Connor, the 14-year-old who died this week, in front of his horrified classmates; by the family of 15-year-old Iris Goldsmith, laid to rest on Wednesday after an awful accident; by countless, nameless others who have been given a timeframe for survival because of cancer, or some other awful terminal illness that steals lives too soon.
We should be pro-ageing, not anti it. Wrinkles show how lucky we are, how fortunate we have been to weather the tides and the storms. Remember this, the next time you feel shame at some “crow’s feet” (who makes this stuff up?) or “fine lines”: life is precious, and to grow old is an absolute gift.