In February my buddy Michelle visited me within the coastal village of Zipolite in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca state, the place I’ve been semi-residing for the reason that onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
I had final seen Michelle in Kazakhstan in 2014, once we have been nonetheless in our 30s and I had descended briefly upon her house within the Kazakh capital of Astana earlier than darting off to Lebanon and Vietnam. This pre-pandemic modus operandi of manic worldwide itinerance had been pushed by a mixture of things, together with an obvious need to thwart the passage of time by remaining in fixed movement and a have to keep away from my psychologically harmful homeland, the USA, in any respect price.
Time handed anyway, after all. Michelle returned residence to Washington; I ended up briefly sedentary in Mexico, and we each entered our 40s. Our 2023 reunion started with requisite reminiscences of practically freezing to demise within the Kazakh countryside, patronising all-night karaoke bars, and putting our palms within the gilded handprint of then-dictator of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana’s looming Bayterek monument.
Michelle then crammed me in on the homeland gossip from Washington – my very own birthplace – the place, she reported, she had discovered herself within the common firm of a a lot youthful crowd. And it was within the context of this dialog that she remarked that she generally felt the urge to apologise for having wrinkles round her eyes.
This received me to pondering, as Michelle appeared to have articulated one thing I subconsciously felt – although I had by no means thought of myself overly involved with bodily maintenance.
I’ve not, for instance, brushed my hair since 2003 in southern Spain, and I wash it with vinegar – after I hassle to clean it, that’s. Laundry is completed in a bucket with dish cleaning soap, and my two entrance enamel are mere replicas of their former selves, having fallen casualty to a Turkish sidewalk the place in 2019 I undertook to carry out acrobatics after ingesting an excessive amount of wine.
Once I thought of it candidly, nevertheless, I recognised an arc of guilt that had accompanied the ageing course of and realised that I, too, felt reflexively apologetic every time my grey hairs have been too seen or my eyes appeared drained.
Then there may be the matter of cell phone selfies, and the perennial temptation to avail myself of all wrinkle-minimising choices every time the picture is destined for social media dissemination. Whereas the usage of such modifying options can simply be ridiculed as an train in narcissistic self-delusion and false promoting, it may also be a fashion of compensating for an overriding sense of disgrace and the sense that one is by some means failing at life by getting outdated.
However provided that life consists of getting outdated, feeling ashamed about it’s a fairly exhausting option to reside.
To make sure, the age of social media has solely amplified stigmas related to ageing, significantly for the feminine gender, which has historically been disproportionately tasked with being aesthetically pleasing.
Within the protracted superficiality that passes for existence in US-style capitalist society, pores and skin wrinkles and different perceived feminine defects are solid as failures of the person. And in response to capitalist logic, such failures can solely be rectified by shopping for magnificence merchandise, paying for beauty changes, or in any other case contributing to a panorama basically devoted to company revenue somewhat than human wellness.
There are, after all, these celebrities who current their very own glamorous trajectories into older age as constituting a stand in opposition to age-shaming. However this doesn’t actually do something by way of fixing capitalism, furthering feminism, or making the non-glamorous inhabitants really feel any higher about our our bodies.
A brand new report from the American Psychological Affiliation (APA) in the meantime notes that “ageism is without doubt one of the final socially acceptable prejudices” within the US – with age discrimination “so ingrained in our tradition that we frequently don’t even discover”. Unsurprisingly, ageism has “a number of unfavourable results, for individuals’s bodily and psychological well-being and society as an entire”.
The APA cites analysis by Becca Levy, a professor of psychology at Yale College and of epidemiology at Yale Faculty of Public Well being, into why it’s that the Japanese benefit from the longest life expectations on the earth. One of many first issues Levy seen throughout a visit to Japan as a graduate scholar was “how in a different way older individuals there have been handled … They have been celebrated in households, on TV reveals, in comedian books.”
Certainly, barring any sudden developments within the discipline of immortality, it will appear self-evident {that a} constructive method to ageing is probably the most constructive possibility on the desk.
However it’s simpler mentioned than performed, particularly when capitalism desires you to consider that there’s at all times one thing flawed with you.
This March, the month after Michelle’s go to to Zipolite, I turned 41. The primary individual to want me a cheerful birthday, through WhatsApp, was a younger Venezuelan asylum seeker I had just lately met in Panama when he exited the treacherous stretch of jungle often known as the Darién Hole.
In response to his inquiry as to how outdated I used to be turning, I plunged right into a preemptive state of huge guilt at having to divulge to this charming younger man that I used to be twice his age, and as an alternative typed again: “You don’t even need to know”. To which he in flip replied: “Why not? It’s regular.”
And the actual fact of the matter is that, for one thing as regular as ageing, it needs to be much more normalised.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.