Social media apps such as Instagram and TikTok seem to be pushing all types of creams, mixtures, and treatments for wrinkles, body hair, blemishes, and about anything that has to do with keeping the body young in the most certain way possible. Recently, there has been an upscale in posts regarding the fear of aging and looking young, despite whatever age you may be. However, though this is a fear common within the younger female demographic, it is a problem being stigmatized by both the beauty industry and social media influencers.
Mortality is the greatest flaw of man, and it is one in which humanity has been trying to battle against for centuries. Aging is not something you can simply stop doing outside of death, it is not possible and yet the beauty industry attempts to perpetuate a way in which this law can be turned upside down.
The fear of aging is not a nonsensical fear. There is nothing inherently wrong with aging and there is nothing wrong with being fearsome of it. It is only human to want to go back to old times and to look and appear as young once again.
However, social media influencers are apt to promote many assorted products to their audiences, and within their products tend to be solutions for women aging. Tending to portray appearing old or looking imperfect as something horrible. This goes into the need of women in this modern era to be desirable whether that be to audiences that view them or themselves.
Historically, women who have had this fear would not be at fault for it, as within many industries that move the world once women reached a certain age they were seen as useless and undesirable, and thrown away promptly to make room for the next upcoming young woman to take her place.
“Over a quarter (28 percent) of women under 25 even admit that they ‘regularly’ worry about their signs of aging,” a study that was conducted by Dermstore concluded.
In this study it also suggests that younger women tended to want plastic surgery to reverse the presence of aging within themselves,
A video gained attention on TikTok where it starred a 14-year-old girl showing her routine to slow the process of aging. This caused major outrage at the need for a girl so young to worry about this issue, and got many people focused on how negatively anti-aging culture has infected society, especially within young women.
These simple solutions to make the problem of aging go away are causing great harm to the self-image of many young people and tend to just be temporary solutions. As some of these fixes include Botox and have no lasting effect on the body, and have no evidence to back up its claim of preventing aging.
Although this problem persists, recognition of this modern-day problem is shining a light on the harm this has caused young people. Much must be changed for this fear to go away, but as of now there is hope that support can be provided for people who deal with this issue and that people who promote anti-aging culture are called out and shown the negative side of this problem.
If you are currently dealing with self-image issues, please get in contact with support or go to
www.nowtexas.com/links-resources.
For more information on the beauty industry and the targeting of young women, please visit
nypost.com/2017/09/05/fear-of-aging-has-women-in-their-20s-stressing-about-wrinkles/, or i-d.vice.com/en/article/qjv3ex/gen-z-anti-ageing-tiktok-old-age-filter.
