The Age of Age
Essays, Featured — By Sarah Thebarge on October 2, 2009 at 12:00 am
In 1492, Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. In 1493, he crossed it again, this time accompanied by Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon.
Ponce de Leon spent more than a decade conquering the Caribbean, including the islands of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. In his conversations with natives, he heard legends about a Fountain of Youth. Eager to find a cure for his aging body, he set sail again, this time heading north from Puerto Rico to the land we now call Florida.
Historians speculate he first landed at St. Augustine, and it is widely believed that in this area he discovered his miraculous Fountain of Youth — although Ponce de Leon’s subsequent death and Florida’s aging retiree population argue against this.
Fast forward 500 years to 1993, the year the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine was established. Americans had stopped looking to magic, and were instead looking to science, to discover the cure for whatever aged them.
Anti-aging medicine has become a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. If you give a plastic surgeon enough cash, you can get any treatment you want. If you happen to be really loaded, you don’t have to choose between them; you can have them all.
You can have botulism injected around your eyes to make the crow’s feet disappear. You can have your nose intentionally fractured and re-set to make it thinner and straighter. You can have bones removed from your feet to enable you to squeeze into a smaller-sized pair of stilettos. You can have silicone balloons implanted in your breasts. And men, just in case you thought you were above these procedures, you can elect to have metal rods strategically implanted in your genitals. No, really, it’s true.
The anti-aging technique that’s most appalling to me is euphemistically called “autologous fat transplantation,” and involves suctioning fat from a person’s backside, compressing it, and injecting it into their face to minimize wrinkles.
The fact that this procedure was not only conceptualized, but is performed regularly, is a testament to the lengths to which we will go to thwart the aging process. One could argue that if Columbus and Ponce de Leon launched the Age of Exploration, and philosophers like Thomas Paine ushered in the Age of Reason, celebrity culture and plastic surgery have entered America into the Age of, well, Age.
Just like my glut of maps made me feel bad for Lewis and Clark, the availability of cosmetic surgery makes me feel bad for Ponce de Leon, who wandered for years in Florida’s humid heat, searching for the Fountain of Youth.
Perhaps his only mistake was he was trying to find a cure for age outside of himself, when all this time it was hiding in his ass.
5 Comments
Great punch line!
So, I’m not fat. I’m just keeping my medicine handy.
I hope you wrote that article just so you had a place to stick that last line.
I experienced the Age Divide when my seven-year-old brother informed me over the phone that my “biological clock was ticking” and that I “wasn’t getting any younger.” Did I mention I was 18 at the time?
He had already kindly informed members of our church that I was having a baby… in four years and nine months (enough time to finish college and gestate).
Sometimes you don’t need a grandfather to make you feel old.
makes me want to never wear make-up, laugh forever and eat chocolate cake. you only live once, right?