Andrea, a PhD in literature who works for a nonprofit in Dallas, is in her late 40s and feels the pressure to remain youthful is palpable - almost irresistible. “Everyone has a facelift if they can afford one,” she says. “I’m a feminist to the core, but if I had the money, I would get a deep-plane facelift in a heartbeat. I’m saving up to get my neck done.” Her neck looks fine, but like millions of middle-aged women, she’s convinced it isn’t. She withheld her last name out of embarrassment, despite her feelings being utterly commonplace.
Dr. Sarah Lamb, an anthropologist at Brandeis University, has studied this phenomenon for over a decade. Her subjects in Boston are devoted to “permanent personhood” - freezing their self-concept at around 35 - 40 - and do everything to stay young. Yet they’re increasingly frustrated with the idea of “successful ageing,” which sets up a binary between good and bad old age. The implication: you can now fail at ageing.
As a fiftysomething medical anthropologist, I sympathize. Rapid scientific progress has given us more tools to stop time convincingly than ever. When I see products touting AHA/BHA acids or ceramides, I want to believe they’ll transform my skin back to my twenties. That’s the problem: behind all these hypermodern claims is the same old ageism.
It wasn’t always like this. In the 1600s and 1700s, when people 65+ made up just 2% of the population, older folks were revered. Fashionable people often lied about being older. But after the American Revolution, industrialization and a growing elderly population birthed a “youth culture.” By the mid-1800s, terms like “old coot” emerged. A linguistic study found age stereotypes have become more negative in a linear way over 200 years, switching from positive to negative around 1880.
Russian scientist Elie Metchnikoff, father of immunology, coined gerontology and gave anti-ageing its first boost in the early 1900s, claiming science could prolong life beyond biblical limits. But modern anti-ageing culture truly began in the mid-20th century, after advances in medicine allowed record numbers to reach advanced ages. In 1961, chemist Dr. Robert Havighurst coined “successful ageing,” making ageing well a personal choice. Ageing became officially “bad.”
Today’s longevity culture is the latest iteration. Harvard’s Sinclair Lab aims to reprogram cells to be “young” again. The USC-Buck Nathan Shock Center wants to extend healthspan by digging into biological processes. On the surface, nothing’s wrong with wanting to live well. But advocates often make death seem optional. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were caught on a hot mic talking about immortality. Google’s Ray Kurzweil predicts we’ll overcome disease and ageing. This hope is ageism wearing a lab coat.
Cultural critic Jessica DeFino agrees: “Longevity is just the latest word for anti-ageing.” After Allure announced in 2017 it would stop using “anti-ageing,” brands pivoted to terms like pro-ageing, non-ageing, and preventative ageing. The market is now valued at $78 billion and growing. “These terms sound more positive, more scientific,” DeFino says, “but it’s all anti-ageing.”
The goal is to stop normal biological processes, so any sign of ageing means you’re failing. But failure is the industry’s ultimate success - there’s always another product to buy. Before Metchnikoff, anti-ageing research was considered fringe; now it’s mainstream, with hundreds of biotech companies and influencers cashing in.
Drugs like Metformin and rapamycin are used off-label despite little evidence they slow ageing in humans. Anthropologist Dr. Abou Farman notes researchers now focus on “small bits” of science: “Don’t talk about living forever; talk about how our knees are going to live forever.” He sees a connection between the rise of longevity rhetoric and widespread fear about the end of the world. “The desire and anxiety are coiled together.”
Research psychologist Dr. Ashley Lytle links our anti-ageing obsession to coping with chaos. “When the world feels overwhelming, people double down on this.” She and I have noticed internalized ageism surfacing at younger ages: college students buying anti-wrinkle products, twenty-somethings blaming sore backs on “old age,” joking about “dementia.” “We have this rampant idea that showing signs of ageing is something to stave off forever,” Lytle says.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha live on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, where the ideal is permanent youthfulness. Ageist beauty standards are dressed up as “self-care.” DeFino says, “We laundered these ideals through the language of empowerment. They’re now synonymous in the cultural imagination, though they couldn’t be farther apart.”
Anti-ageing is anti-life. It tells us that living - and looking like we’ve lived - is something to fight. But ageing isn’t a battle; it’s what bodies do. And no amount of lab coats will change that.