- Age Before Beauty
- December 2009
“The world doesn’t do old and ugly"
The recent ITV Tonight program ‘Age before beauty’ filled me with sadness. The programs aim was to shed light on the body image and self esteem levels of the average mature women living in celebrity obsessed Britain. It highlighted the tremendous pressures on women, particularly women over 40, to look youthful.
100 women aged 35 years and above were asked to take part in a week long experiment. The experiment necessitated the recording of a click every time the volunteer had a negative thought about themselves. It was launched with the catchy phrase “if you think it click it”.
Irene Estry one of the programme experts stated “my concerns are for more than are more than the concerns of a trainer. It makes me very sad and at the same times it makes me very angry, because were putting this on ourselves”. She went on to add that older women shouldn’t look at media images of young women and want to look like them. It is impossible to achieve. Secondly, women try to be happy with who they really are.
When facing the prospect of getting older, 59 year old Sherrie Hewson the successful actress (Coronation Street & Emmerdale) and Loose Women panellists stated “I don’t want to‘. Sherrie than went on to add “I want to look in the mirror and see who I use to see. My mother doesn’t have a problem with it, none one in my family has a problem with it; it’s just me. Something happened along the way and it has stopped me thinking about logically and sensibly about myself and getting older… I don’t’ know what it is”.
Later when told by Eunice Grayson, (an ex bond girl who has fully accepted growing older) that she had an “attractive…lovely…lived in …compassionate face” Sherrie tearfully replied “It’s a very hard thing to accept yourself, if you are not in that place”.
The program also introduced us to 53 year old Paula Hessian. “I feel invisible because I’m getting old”, she said. “ I feel like I’m not attractive any more. I feel like people don’t want to hear what I have to say anymore … I don’t like anything about my face”.
She continued with the memorable statement “I believe the turkey should have it’s neck back and the crow should have it's feet back.”. Ending "I’m sure I’d be happy if I looked younger”.
We were also introduced to 58 Jay Tapfield who spent £15,000 on cosmetic surgery. In response to the question ‘has all of this [surgery] made you happy she replied “yes, very much so”. “
Despite being happy with her surgery, Jay admitted that she had only managed to change herself and and didn’t know what to do about tackling the thorny issue of societies attitudes towards mature women. "The world doesn’t do old and ugly!" she said.
As the days went by the number of clicks recorded by the women went up and up. Mirrors, magazines, shopping trips, TV programmes or feeling insecure; all generated clicks. In fact it took very little to send the volunteer's somewhat shaky body image and self esteem into a nosedive.
Click, click, click … totalling an average of 36 per day. It’s easy to see how body image issues could be contributing to the rising numbers of women suffering from depression, mental health issues and eating disorders .
Aging is a reality we all must accept. Failure to do so will create a tortured soul within; one similar to the one we saw in the depths of Sherrie Hewson’s eyes.