Sunday, November 9, 2014

Why Looking Middle Aged Is the New Goal (Or So They Tell Me)

Find out why many professional women are opting not to over plump or perma-freeze their aging faces

"My patients aren’t in here because they’re trying to hold on to their husbands. If they’re trying to hang on to anything, it’s their jobs." So says Dr. Macrene Alexiades-Armenakas a highly sought after Manhattan-based dermatologist in The New York Times.

What the good doctor, who holds not one, but three degrees from Harvard, is alluding to is that, after a certain age, professional women can be dismissed as too old to do the jobs they've worked so hard (and long) to get. As one client put it, "I’m on an airplane to a different continent every other week. There’s no way they’d let me keep up this pace if I looked as exhausted as I am."

But, having the technology to be able to erase the ravages of a (longish) life lived is a double-edged sword. If these high-powered dames lift every sag and iron out every wrinkle they run the risk of looking too young (and perhaps vain/Real Housewife-y). So, as The Times says, "What these women seek is not so much the fountain of youth as its corollary, eternal early middle age. And so Dr. Alexiades-Armenakas strives not to iron out too much of life’s ravages."

One high falutin' vice chairman concurs, saying that she, and others like her, are looking to be "suspended at the 45 to 55 range."

As a result, dermatologists like Alexiades-Armenakas strive to leave some of those hard-earned crows feet and laugh lines in place, the concept being that "If you leave a few wrinkles, it looks more authentic."

While it's amazing that we live in a time when it's possible to (fake) dialing back the hands of time to a precise age range, is it equally amazing (read: sad) that these women feel compelled to do it? Would Warren Buffet or Richard Branson ever have such a notion enter the super-successful minds housed inside their decidedly wrinkly heads? High doubtful. How can we have come so far but still have such a long road to trudge?

No comments:

Post a Comment