We have Sky and I watch the odd programme on it - mainly Star Trek if I'm honest. As a result I have become exposed to rather more ads than I used to be, and I seem to see more and more aimed at women and ageing.
Now I know that advertising is about inventing a problem and giving you the solution, and I know that lines and wrinkles don't devalue me as a person but the drip drip drip of these ads has sent me running for the appropriate department in Boots and handing over cash in pursuit of this particular set of elixirs.
I wonder if I am more vulnerable to all of this being a late returner to work - I am re-inventing my career path in my 40's and working alongside people with the rosy, fresh glow of their twenties. I dress appropriately enough (no mutton button for me) but I feel so old at times and the notion that this cream or that lotion can restore my long gone youth is tempting.
Youth is the holy grail and the prize: I have banged on about the notion that 40+ is the dead zone before (especially for women) and there's no need to do it again, but at some point we have all got to assess our attitudes to aging and being old - the easy assumptions about what being old means have got to be challenged. Old doesn't mean tea dances and carpet slippers when you were young in the 60's and your youth was characterised by the Rolling Stones and lots of drugs, old doesn't start in your 40's any more (your granny was old at 45, but then her youth was maimed by hard work, war and a chronically poor diet).
A shallow obsession with skin care and wrinkles isn't addressing our longer life span and better health in our old age, its just ensuring that those who are getting older stay neurotic and vulnerable to the nonsense that skin care companies get rich on. People, in short, like me.
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