Agelessness Overated and Overpriced
So I'm having some imsomnia lately. I blame it on the pre-marathon jitters. But now that the marathon is over, I will blame it on the fact that it happened so fast.
It's a lot like the aging process really. We do nothing but ache for days when we are older, more independent, happy and 21. Right?
Then that time comes and we are drunk for an entire year. Maybe we get married or have kids or graduate with a degree in something that didn't require much effort. Like law. Or engineering. Or corporate bullshitting. But I digress.
We awaken to decide that growing up - old - is not nearly as fascinating as we would have come to believe. In fact, most of us would go back to experience some of the finer things in life...like traveling abroad, traveling alone or better, entirely avoiding the walk of shame. In some cases, it was the run of shame, yes?
So that's why I find it especially painful to open my inbox at 4 am after yet another sleepless night only to be acousted by this. "Ageless hair technology," it is called. My ass. $195 for a tiny tube of something that promises to take the bite out of how old and pathetic we feel each and every morning? So light and airy that it's perfectly fine for every day use? Come on now. How gullible are we? Of course you want us to use it every day. It costs $195 per bottle. That's nearly $10 per use. Talk about salon products in the privacy of your own bathroom. Apparently they come with the salon price too. (Isn't this the same concept as buying a tiny tub of Ben & Jerry's for $40? Who would do that? Don't answer if you would, by the way. Bad idea.)
Here is my take: these brilliant marketers have caught on to what I call the "ageful" factor. It's a combination of the normal aging process, rage, awful, regretful and more things rolled together to form this hybrid idea of people and products who are - or suffer from - the ageful factor. It's a time when folks - generally women - hit a space in life where the dawning fact is that time is marching on and nothing can stop it. A few things are promising to hinder the battle wounds, but nothing will stop the clock. And while every person needs to have a little umph and glamour in their daily routine, I feel insulted to think that we are so desperate to spend more than 10 times the price for regular formulated salon specialty hair care products for the simple addition of a word to the packaging.
This is just enough to send me looking for my next half marathon. Ha. I'll show them. Maybe I'll try a full or an iron woman. Talk about not aging. I may just run time backward...then bottle it all up and sell it to the rest of the desperate and deserving women in our world. 'Cept I will only charge what it costs me plus enough to buy these. I'm not greedy, I just don't wanna grow up.
It's a lot like the aging process really. We do nothing but ache for days when we are older, more independent, happy and 21. Right?
Then that time comes and we are drunk for an entire year. Maybe we get married or have kids or graduate with a degree in something that didn't require much effort. Like law. Or engineering. Or corporate bullshitting. But I digress.
We awaken to decide that growing up - old - is not nearly as fascinating as we would have come to believe. In fact, most of us would go back to experience some of the finer things in life...like traveling abroad, traveling alone or better, entirely avoiding the walk of shame. In some cases, it was the run of shame, yes?
So that's why I find it especially painful to open my inbox at 4 am after yet another sleepless night only to be acousted by this. "Ageless hair technology," it is called. My ass. $195 for a tiny tube of something that promises to take the bite out of how old and pathetic we feel each and every morning? So light and airy that it's perfectly fine for every day use? Come on now. How gullible are we? Of course you want us to use it every day. It costs $195 per bottle. That's nearly $10 per use. Talk about salon products in the privacy of your own bathroom. Apparently they come with the salon price too. (Isn't this the same concept as buying a tiny tub of Ben & Jerry's for $40? Who would do that? Don't answer if you would, by the way. Bad idea.)
Here is my take: these brilliant marketers have caught on to what I call the "ageful" factor. It's a combination of the normal aging process, rage, awful, regretful and more things rolled together to form this hybrid idea of people and products who are - or suffer from - the ageful factor. It's a time when folks - generally women - hit a space in life where the dawning fact is that time is marching on and nothing can stop it. A few things are promising to hinder the battle wounds, but nothing will stop the clock. And while every person needs to have a little umph and glamour in their daily routine, I feel insulted to think that we are so desperate to spend more than 10 times the price for regular formulated salon specialty hair care products for the simple addition of a word to the packaging.
This is just enough to send me looking for my next half marathon. Ha. I'll show them. Maybe I'll try a full or an iron woman. Talk about not aging. I may just run time backward...then bottle it all up and sell it to the rest of the desperate and deserving women in our world. 'Cept I will only charge what it costs me plus enough to buy these. I'm not greedy, I just don't wanna grow up.
I think about this rather a lot too, dear. Aging, or the obsession with it anyway. I have two primary thoughts on it.
ReplyDelete1. I enjoy life more and more with every passing day. IMHO, I get wiser. Not smarter, just wiser. (if you don't get the difference, comment back and I'll explain) I have lived more things, good and bad, and I feel like I just get better and better at enjoying what is well worth enjoying, not worrying about much except that which really does require a bit of worry, and ignoring what's really not all that important. One of those things I ignore - expensive, anti-aging beauty products. I am highly willing to spend a bit on a really good moisturizer, but just that, moisturizer. And I moisturize like it's a religion. But far too few, if any, of the stuff they dump into beauty products has been through any kind of testing as to what effect it will have on you systemically - ie. stuff that gives you cancer, like parabens, found in most skin moisture related stuff. So I just moisturize, loving JASON aloe moisturizer right now.
2. My whole perspective on aging was changed, almost instantly, by my original Seattle apartment-mate, Kate somethingorother. I was lamenting aging, growing old and infirm, I really had a pretty negative attitude about it, almost a fear. And she told me that she honestly was looking forward being old. Being that old, wrinkly woman on the front porch, in her rocking chair, to whom others came for wisdom and advice. Think Georgia O'Keefe in that Annie Liebovitz picture of her. And something, I still don't quite know what, appeals to me tremendously about that image. Maybe it's because of my own late, but formerly easy going and wise, Nonna, who passed away at 98 a few years back. I now want to be that.
The one thing I would like to get rid of, my belly. It's not healthy. I think Dr Oz has proven that. I'm fine with the junk in my trunk, but I gotta lose this belly. Hell, I almost look pregnant. It's gotta go.
Thanks Cara. You are so funny! Georgia and Annie sound delicious. Beats the pants off the alternatives...like Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe. Still, I get what you are saying. That's why I am trying to think of it as agelessness. Hell, I feel like I am 18, nevermind that my 36 year old body somedays tells me otherwise...
ReplyDeletePS. You are gorgeous with gorgeous skin. Way to go JASON aloe!