Our anti-ageing quest only increases anxiety, says Matt Haig. Instead, we need to understand the tricks of time
Mirror, mirror: Helmut Berger selling his soul in Dorian Gray (1970). Photograph: Sargon/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock
As a culture, we are obsessed with ageing. We have always been obsessed but now, paradoxically, in an era where we live longer than ever, we fear it more than ever before too. There is, of course, a whole industry devoted to capitalising on our fears of the natural ageing process and it’s a lucrative one. In fact, the anti-ageing industry, which is the largest part of the beauty industry, is now worth more than $200 billion a year.
Our perfectly understandable worries about time and mortality are being capitalised on, and exploited. Every advert that encourages us to look young is confirming the same thing: we need to fear growing old. And yet no anti-wrinkle eye cream in the world is going to stop us from getting old. The anti-ageing industry is a marketer’s dream because it is an industry offering continual solutions for something that isn’t ever really solved. Ageing.
Even if or when we work out how to stop the physical process of ageing – and organisations such as the SENS Research Foundation and various Silicon Valley biotech firms are trying to do just that – it won’t curb our anxieties. It will accentuate them (not least, the ultimate fear of missing out for those who can’t afford it), and give us many new ones (a new population crisis being the first one).
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