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Art Exhibit: Hope in the Shadows(event)(1 day)
ZY Qigong Class for Energy Healers & TCM Practitioners(event)(2 days)
Enhancing your Fat Burning Potential(event)(2 days)
OPEN HOUSE at Access Natural Healing (event)(3 days)
CONSCIOUS VIBRATIONAL ALIGNMENT WORKSHOP(event)(4 days)
SHAMANIC DRUMMING & DREAMING CIRCLE:(event)(4 days)

Act Your Age

Keep your body moving and your mind learning

Four years from now, the eldest baby boomer—the leader of that massive demographic bulge—will turn 65. Yikes. What does 65 look like? There was a time when I thought turning 65 meant checking out—not out of life, but stepping off the big merry-go-round, sinking into an overstuffed sofa, and watching the world whiz by. It was called retirement.

The day my grandpa retired, he basically sat down for the rest of his life. Like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, his joints shrivelled like dried mushrooms, and other than shuffling from bed to bathroom to dinner table, he was as fixed as the furniture. But he lived another 20 years, dying peacefully at the age of 85, well past the average at the time.

But that was decades ago, long before aging became public enemy #1. Consider this statement from Cambridge Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Aging researcher Aubrey de Grey: Aging is a “barbaric, uncivilized phenomenon that shouldn’t really be tolerated in polite society.”

From a strictly evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to find younger people, especially women, more physically attractive than older people; they’ll be better breeders. After all, the vast majority of our ancestors died before their 40th birthday. I’m not advocating people follow the narrow path my grandpa took. Life’s too short to sit part of it out. Anyway, many of today’s so-called “seniors” are more feisty than frail, and fitness-crazed boomers will push that trend even further. Aging does not have to mean getting sick. It does, however, mean getting older. And for an increasing number of people, getting older is simply unacceptable.

Canadians are voluntarily going under the knife or under the needle in unprecedented numbers. Demand for cosmetic surgery and non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as botox injections have never been greater. According to a 2004 survey by Medicard Finance Inc., the battle with gravity may just be beginning. The survey measured the number of cosmetic procedures Canadians underwent over the past two years. Everything was up: breast enhancements, nose jobs, liposuctions, laser hair removals, skin resurfacings, eyelifts, leg-vein therapy, and non-surgical facelifts. The latter practice—in which a doctor threads a string under the skin around the face and pulls—is so popular in some places that patients line up for a “lunchtime lift.”
Another method, called thermoplastic contouring, involves bombarding the face with radio frequencies that eventually tighten collagen. Medical science knows no bounds. Neither do medical practitioners. According to the survey, the number of Canadian doctors offering non-surgical facelifts increased by 325 per cent in 2003.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of cosmetic surgery clients are women between the ages of 35 and 50. Women are no dummies. They know people judge them first by how they look, then by what they do. So don’t blame them for spending their hard-earned money on whatever it takes to ensure they continue earning money—or attracting men, which is similar, as many a woman’s star is hooked to a man.

Where does this massive and pathetic desperation come from? Three sources: First, it is a consequence of ageism: the form of prejudice that views older people, especially female older people, as being less able, less attractive, less smart, and less valuable than younger people. Ageism is pervasive in our celebrity-crazed society and that makes it a powerful, society-shaping force. Second, it’s driven by widespread individual insecurities (as mentioned above).

A third factor is an economic system that never misses a chance to make a buck. The market has obligingly produced an infinite number of potions, devices, services, and procedures that promise to keep the sands of time at bay. The saddest aspect, however, is not the futility of people’s efforts or the potential health risks incurred (see awfulplasticsurgey.com), but the fact that it robs participants of an appreciation of the finer things in life.

No doubt, getting older has its drawbacks. As Bette Davis said: “Old age ain’t no place for sissies.” If I have any advice, it is to dismiss all the anti-aging bumph and focus on living. Keep your body moving, your mind learning, and both of them playing at whatever evokes that sense of fun and wonder you experienced when the merry-go-round first began.

Alicia Priest is a freelance writer in Victoria who dyes her hair, sort of. It’s really just a rinse.