In my work with style, I flip through twenty or more magazines each month. With each one, I am bombarded by images of perfection. Fortunately, since I have worked on countless photo-shoot sets, I am able to keep it in perspective, separating reality from the fantasy.
While I understand the reality of product presentation and aspirational marketing, I have to say I am bothered by the product ads aimed at women over 40. Photoshop has been used so severely that the faces have been completely distorted from reality… It’s gone too far.
In the photo of Diane Keaton below, she looks beautiful, no doubt. However, she is 66 years old; I don’t know about you, but I don’t’ know many 65-year-old women who look like the photo on the right. Any woman over 40 has some degree of lines around her eyes when she smiles. How about a little crinkly skin on her eyelids? Maybe at 66, a few smile lines around the mouth? Lines anyone, somewhere?
It is images like these projected to us on a daily basis that contribute to a distorted beauty and body image. It is a factor in setting an ageless expectation that as we age, we should not show the signs of aging. It sets the aging bar too unrealistically high. Even worse, these images are shaping expectations that aren’t even real—they are fake, manufactured on a computer!
These false images lead to women looking in the mirror and trying to live up to a standard that doesn’t exist. An example of the damage it creates is as a 65-year-old woman looks in the mirror, which one of these three images of Diane Keaton will she compare herself to? Which one gets more coverage? Yes, it’s the magazine ad on the right that she is looking at as it leaves an indelible mark in her mind to set an unrealistic standard. This only benefits cosmetic companies and surgeons.
The reality is that we are living in a celebrity driven, beauty focused, youth obsessed, size zero culture. Unrealistic images are fed to us on an all-day, everyday cycle. Daily consumption of these images can distort the reality of a healthy beauty and body image and lead to a feeling of despair and false belief that you don’t measure up.
While we can’t remove all the negative images from our environment, we can find areas where we can control where and when they come in. If you’re watching any celebrity entertainment shows, buying fashion magazines or visiting celebrity websites, these would be good things to start removing from your view.
My point is to “out” the reality of the fantasy so that no woman is left feeling not good enough, not pretty enough, not young enough. While we are all fighting the good fight of holding back fine lines and wrinkles, there is something completely beautiful and right about looking your age while looking amazing for your age. For me, the center photo is just perfect. She has lines in all the right places and looks beautiful, well-maintained with style. I think this is growing old . . . gracefully.