‘We’ve been constructed to think a certain way’: The psychology of ageing
School girl Carson Bradley caused shockwaves when she posted a TikTok of her elaborate skincare regimen titled: “Things I do to slow down the ageing process as a 14-year-old”.
Her tips – “I started doing most of these things at 12” – include taking apple cider pills, using retinol twice a day, applying face masks, drinking green tea, sleeping on a satin pillow case and taping paper over the car window to block out UV rays on long trips. “Never forget to do skincare on your neck because that is one of the main things that ages,” Alabama-based Bradley advises.
The video, which went viral, is an extreme example of how social media is introducing Gen Z to an age-old fear: getting old.
Smooth-skinned influencers post clips of themselves being injected with “preventative Botox” to stave off wrinkles before they even emerge. Radio frequency devices promise to tighten skin, serums are spruiked to achieve the “glass skin” or “glazed donut” look, and a straw designed like a flute has been invented to avoid lip lines. Today, the “anti-aging” hashtag on TikTok has 1.2 million posts.
From skincare to ageism, there’s no escaping our obsession with youth.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
The lure of eternal youth
Last year, a filter that uses artificial intelligence to give TikTokers a glimpse of their future selves provoked widespread horror. “I don’t like it at all. No. No,” said Kylie Jenner, the 27-year-old millionaire, who starred in Keeping up with the Kardashians, of her future self. In a culture that worships youth, preventing the signs of ageing has become synonymous with wellness and self-care.
Griffith University’s Dr Veya Seekis, who researches appearance anxiety in young people, is concerned social media is being used to stoke fears about ageing earlier than ever before. Many influencers are paid to promote products, she says, and cosmetic surgeons tout “baby Botox” as a positive way to invest in your appearance.
“It’s promoted as being like positive body image because it empowers you to retain your youth,” Seekis says. “It is breeding new anxiety – if you don’t do this now you’ll fall into that terrible zone of ageing. Young people know that youth is rewarded by society, and so they will do whatever it takes to prevent that ageing process from happening.”
It’s an issue Melbourne-based Maggie Zhou, a 25-year-old writer and content creator, is conflicted about. “On one hand, I think a lot of people are embracing ageing, and we’re talking more about ageism,” she says. “On the other hand, it does feel like we are involved in more practices, especially in the skincare and beauty realm, that, let’s be honest, do target anti-ageing.”
The fear of ageing has been embedded in our psyche for millennia. The ancient Greek myth of Tithonus – who loses his faculties and is left to babble incoherently in a room for eternity – taps into an existential anxiety, as does the fable of Dorian Gray, who gave up his soul in exchange for eternal youth. Old is a country no one wants to visit. We are afraid of ageing because we fear losing our independence, and sickness, loneliness and death.
Women, in particular, face huge societal pressure to slow the ageing process; to minimise wrinkles, dye grey hair and cover up “tuckshop” arms. They experience invisibility in middle age; ignored in shops and restaurants and overlooked in the workplace when no longer the recipient of the male gaze.
In later life, infantilisation is widespread. Patronising shop assistants ask: “What can I do for you, young lady?” or invoke the royal we: “How are we doing today?”
Old is a country no one wants to visit. We are afraid of ageing because we fear losing our independence, sickness, loneliness and death.
“Youth has always been a currency in terms of beauty,” Zhou says. “Is TikTok just amplifying these conversations? I think the standards of beauty that we’re upholding here are the same ones that we’ve had for decades. Society benefits women who obey these types of beauty standards.”
Ageism in Australia
A 2021 report by the Australian Human Rights Commission said ageism remains normalised and acceptable in Australia, despite leading to poorer health, social isolation, decreased quality of life and financial insecurity for older adults. Last year, the Australian HR Institute survey on attitudes to age among employers found only one-quarter were open to hiring workers aged over 65 “to a large extent”.
Homelessness has become increasingly widespread among older women and longer life expectancies and a resulting inheritance impatience is leading to more cases of elder abuse.
“Ageism is one of the only forms of discrimination and prejudice in society that is still widely tolerated,” says Tim Windsor, an associate professor in psychology at Flinders University. “At the same time, it’s the only form of discrimination that all of us will eventually be subjected to, if we’re fortunate enough to live long enough, so it’s in everybody’s interests to try and do something about it.”
ABC broadcaster Jacinta Parsons was in her early 30s when she first twigged she was becoming invisible. She and a group of friends walked past a building site, bracing for cat calls. They were met with silence. Parsons was nonplussed.
Author Jacinta Parsons.Credit: Justin McManus
“There was the feminist response which was ‘Well, I don’t want to be looked at anyway’,” says Parsons, who became so enraged by the injustice of ageism – especially for women – that she wrote the book, A Question of Age. But being ignored was also jarring; the realisation that they no longer represented a conquest to be won.
Invisibility can mean that women are ignored in queues, can’t land job interviews, and are shamed for not dressing in “age-appropriate” ways.
“But then there’s also that invisibility that’s really dangerous, where we see homeless women, and we see invisibility in our health care.”
In her seminal 1972 essay The Double Standard of Ageing, American philosopher Susan Sontag wrote that an ageing woman is judged far more harshly than an ageing man. “Since women are considered maximally eligible in early youth, after which their sexual value drops steadily, even young women feel themselves in a desperate race against the calendar. They are old as soon as they are no longer very young.”
Is ageing harder for women?
The double standard still exists today. A 2018 study on online dating, which analysed 200,000 users found that while men’s sexual desirability peaks at age 50, women’s drop from the time she is 18.
Following the launch of Star Wars: The Force Awakens Carrie Fisher was trolled over her appearance while her co-star Harrison Ford – 14 years her senior – faced little criticism. “Please stop debating about whether or not I aged well,” she tweeted. “Unfortunately, it hurts all three of my feelings. My body hasn’t aged as well as I have. Blow us.”
She then retweeted a fan: “Men don’t age better than women, they’re just allowed to age.”
But men can also feel diminished by ageing. “Psychologically I think men have always struggled to a degree with ageing, especially around retirement and those life transitional phases,” says Carl Nelms, the manager of Blokes Psychology, a clinical service catering exclusively to men.
He sees clients in their 50s and 60s who have defined themselves by their careers and neglected their life outside work. “So once the career starts to wind up, they realise ‘I’m lonely, I don’t have a lot of social connections outside of work and I don’t have many hobbies. My physical health is declining, and I don’t feel as masculine, chemically, my testosterone is decreasing’. So it’s a real point of crisis.”
Clinical psychologist Jane Turner, who has worked in the field of ageing for 30 years, says it is common for people living in residential aged-care facilities not to identify with their peers.
When asked what it is about the nursing home that they really don’t like, she says the most common answer can be summarised as: the place is full of old people.
People internalise the negative stereotype of old age, Turner says, and seek to psychologically distance themselves from it.
Maggie Kirkman defiantly calls herself an old woman.
Maggie Kirkman: ‘old’ isn’t a dirty word. Credit: Eddie Jim
“I refuse to stop using the word ‘old’, I’d rather change the meaning than give in to euphemisms or ageist stereotypes,” Kirkman says. “If you have this culture that age is all downhill, that when you’re young the thing you dread is being old, you have pop songs that say ‘I hope I die before I grow old’, without being aware of it, you position yourself within that view of the world. And then of course, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Kirkman, 77, works part-time as an academic, to the chagrin of some who see those over 60 as keeping young people out of jobs. “I’ve experienced loads of ageism, I continue to experience it.”
It was Dr Miriam Rose Ungunmerr Baumann, the Senior Australian of the Year in 2021, who made Kirkman ponder the discrepancy between the way elders are venerated in Indigenous communities and the lack of respect for older people in broader society.
“When Miriam Rose was speaking to old people she would say to them, ‘you’re all elders’,” Kirkman says. “She was determined to elevate all old people on the model of Indigenous Australians.”
Changing the narrative around ageing
Dr Stephanie Ward, a geriatrician on ABC TV’s Old People’s Home for Teenagers, says intergenerational contact (where people of different ages come together to share experiences) can challenge negative attitudes.
At the beginning and end of the series the teenagers were asked to list five words that described older people. The difference was marked. Initially, the adolescents chose words that denoted frailty. By the end, they were picking words such as “interesting” and “fun”.
“Intergenerational programs give people that opportunity to really understand what another generation has been through and to see beyond the surface,” Ward says. “So you learn about the differences but you also learn about the commonalities.”
Vya, a gregarious then-16-year-old, appeared in the second series of Old People’s Home for Teenagers, where a group of adolescents spent eight weeks at a Sydney retirement village.
“Before the show I just thought old people were a bit cranky,” Vya says.
Dave Ball and Vya in ABC TV’s Old People’s Home for Teenagers.
But she bonded with Dave Ball, a then-82-year-old former engineer, who was in a band in London in the 1960s and loves cutting up the dance floor.
“We clicked so easily because he’s like the old version of me,” says Vya, who still sees Ball every week and communicates with him and other residents in a Whatsapp chat group. “I hope to grow old just like him and still have all my energy, still be super excited to see people and super jumpy. He’s definitely just like a teenager in my eyes.”
Older woman? Hear me roar
In 2020 Luisa Dunn, 54, became a poster girl for the grey hair “revolution”, when she documented her transition to her natural colour on Instagram.
Dunn, who has 1.2 million followers and was snapped up by Silverfox MGMT – which represents models over 30 – is driven by the opportunity to help reframe ageing for the next generation.
Although she has received thousands of ageist online comments, such as wrinkled granny, thumbs down emoji, Dunn is buoyed by those who have thanked her for shifting their fear of ageing.
“What I find most encouraging is seeing this inspiring movement where more and more women feel empowered to make independent choices about their bodies, without apology.”
However, she says her journey to ageing acceptance has not been easy or linear, and she had to unpack her own internalised ageism.
Luisa Dunn has 1.1 million followers on Instagram. Credit: Jedd Cooney
“I think our social conditioning around the negative aspects of ageing and our changing bodies runs very deep,” Dunn says. “One day I would catch a glimpse in the mirror and see an unapologetic confident woman, and the next view myself through society’s critical lens.”
She is frustrated by the number of brands that don’t include older models in their marketing campaigns, saying it reinforces the ageist messages that older customers don’t deserve to be seen in their clothes
“It’s especially egregious when a product is specifically targeted at a 50-plus female but marketed on a 20-year-old model.”
Jacinta Parsons is optimistic that the body acceptance movement, which has been enthusiastically embraced by Generation Z, will encourage people to question why wrinkles and other signs of ageing have been demonised.
“Body positivity has forced us to think differently about bodies and realise how deeply we have been constructed to think a certain way,” Parsons says. “Ageism is the same thing.”
She is going for walks with older women and asking them the sorts of questions she raises in the first book: What do we do when our outside self doesn’t match our inside self? How do we adjust our perceptions of getting older? What does it mean to age as a woman?
“I want to start having much more legitimate conversations about the felt experience of ageing, rather than what we should eat and how we should look,” Parsons says. “I think we need to start giving much more visibility to older women.”
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