Do you dread getting older? Are you spending a fortune on lotions and potions in an effort to hold back the years? Do you spend ages in front of the mirror stressing about wrinkles, lines and saggy bits, or wake up in a cold sweat at 3am worrying about ageing? If so, it’s a sure fire way to make yourself miserable, especially if you’re short of cash.
Cosmetics manufacturers capitalise on the fact that so many people rely on the way they look to make them happy. If you’ve ever turned the sound down on the telly when the adverts are on, you’ll find it’s easier to concentrate on the small print, which usually appears briefly at the foot of the screen. You’ll notice that the way cosmetics ads present their ‘evidence’ is dodgy to say the least.
Look out for statements like ‘70% of 35 women agree‘, ‘reduces the appearance of lines and wrinkles‘, which actually means nothing when you dissect it, and bland sentences that suggest, in a roundabout way, that they’ve used computer graphics to enhance the visual effects of the product in the advert… or in other words, fibbed!
If I’m going to spend tens of pounds on anti-wrinkle face cream, I want to see real scientific evidence that it’s proven to work. Not the opinions of a percentage of a very small, probably statistically irrelevant pool of women. Amateur opinions, from people who have a strong pre-existing desire for the product to do miracles, are just not good enough.
How do you test whether an anti-ageing product works?
Easy. Use it on one half of your face and take a long, hard, honest look when you’ve used it all up to see if you can notice and difference. Ask other people to judge the effects too, so you know for sure you’re not kidding yourself. If neither you nor they can see fewer signs of ageing, you know it simply doesn’t work. The thing is, testing anti ageing products can be an expensive business. But if you’re hooked on the idea of staying young-looking forever, you can always use our discount codes to stock up on posh snake oil to test!
As an aside, the cosmetic industry isn’t regulated… yet. So it’s free to make the most outrageous claims without anyone with any real power objecting.
If you’re one of the lucky ones who draws their self-confidence from the way they are rather than the way they look, you’re fortunate. You’ll be able to resist the cosmetic industry’s nonsense and save yourself a lot of cash while you’re at it. You’ll buy the cheapest moisturiser because you know it does just as good a job as expensive brands. You’ll be free of appearance-related worry and stress, accepting that age happens to everyone. And that there’s no point fighting the inevitable.
It might sound trite, but at the end of the day happiness comes from the inside. You can look thirty at aged sixty and still be just as dissatisfied with life, the universe and everything.
To me, getting older is a voyage of discovery, a natural part of life. I know more than I did when I was younger, so I’m better able to navigate everything life throws at me. Wisdom makes me much happier than simply being young ever did. So what if I’m developing nests of wrinkls around my eyes and mouth? At least they’re smile lines, not frown lines.
That’s not to say I don’t care about how I look. Of course I do. I take a lot of time and care over it. But ageing doesn’t affect my self esteem. Looking good is fun, but the ageing process is a fascinating rather than a threatening process.
Am I smug? Oh, yes. Sorry about that! 
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