Youth Knows No Pain: A Look at the Anti-Aging Beauty Industry

This documentary, Youth Knows No Pain, examines our fear of aging from the perspective of the 60 billion dollar a year anti-aging beauty industry.

Promo

I haven't had the chance to see the documentary in full, but am eagerly awaiting the chance! One of the facts revealed in the film was how much money the filmmaker spent on just dying the gray out of her hair, which seems financially untenable! I have a friend with early gray hair who is considering foregoing her $200 / month hair coloring costs and letting it all go grey. On the one hand, I celebrate this idea of embracing her true beauty (she's one who is fortunate to have a gorgeous grey!). The trick is that, unlike a woman in her 20's with grey hair who will be perceived as and treated as a uniquely young woman with silver hair, my friend is in her mid-thirties and will instantly age "up" into her 40's. The concern I have about this is that, after reading numerous studies about how our self-perception shifts with the way others treat us, the biases that are directed at older women, and the physiological outcomes of our internalized ageism, her self-concept may be altered in a way that could impact her healthful aging process. I know it seems like a stretch, an exaggeration of the potential physical harms of ageism, but who knows where these micro-inequities start and what true impact they have?