Anti-aging! It’s everywhere.
There’s lotions, potions, creams, and make-up. Shampoo, moisturizers, face masks and toothpaste. There are anti-aging diets promoting superfoods, revitalizing drinks, vitamins, herbal mixes, homeopathic remedies and juicing whilst at the same time we read the latest story about the oldest person on the planet reaching that age on wine, chocolate, and a maverick attitude!
We’re told about anti-aging exercises, treatments, laser surgery, sun lamps, and cosmetic procedures. We’re advised on clothes, underwear, hairstyle, hair color, and even eyebrow shape!
There are books, magazines, DVDs, radio programmes, tv programmes, youtube channels, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Snaps, Insta influencers, podcasts, and blogs all dedicated to anti-aging.
We can even go on retreats, workshops, and seminars to learn, discuss and discover the best ways to beat aging.
Why?

Aging is a sign of survival- what’s the alternative? Not surviving? Not a great option. We need to celebrate having survived, realizing that the wrinkles, the lines, the grey hairs are a mark of success, of having reached a point in life that is your new record and you beat that record every day by getting older day by day. A ‘personal best’ you might say.
Whilst there appears to be a huge industry in ‘anti-aging’ and there is a myriad of ways that are promoted to be able to ‘stay young’, it cannot be denied that we are, all of us, not staying young! And that surely is the point.
We are all getting older and that is a good thing, we should stop trying to defy aging and, instead, live positively. Shake off the dreadful, negative, old age stereotypes and ask yourself what is so bad about aging that it has created such an ‘anti’ industry?
Let’s all be pro-age and let’s call out and challenge all the age discrimination that exists out there which has led to this huge ‘anti-aging’ phenomenon.
Let’s do it today.
Morna O’May is the Head of Service for Scotland at Contact the Elderly, the national charity dedicated to tackling loneliness and social isolation amongst older people living in the United Kingdom. Morna also writes the Goodstuffgreatideas blog about all things Third Sector. Follow Morna on Twitter.
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