Snake oil can't rejuvenate a soul

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It was tucked into the news Wednesday. Something about a treatment called "Gentle Waves" that can make old skin look young. You sit in front of a flashing light for 40 seconds and you can reverse the aging process. Except that it takes at least eight treatments at $ 100 each to begin to see a difference and the difference is, even then, subtle.

In the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine a few weeks ago, there was an ad that appeared to be encouraging mental health. Are you depressed? Unhappy? Do you feel alone, lonely, left behind? But this wasn't about one's psyche. This was a come-on for cosmetic surgery. Snip, tuck, peel, abrade and you will gain lost confidence and be back at the top of your game.

You can't get away from it anymore: Facelift, eyelift, browlift, liposuction, body contouring, Botox, collagen, ultrasound, skin tightening, chemical peels, age-spot removals, IPL photorejuvenation. You need to look not just good but young. It's not enough to be who you are - you have to be who you were, too, only firmer and fitter and with fewer lines.

How did this happen? How did we women now in our 50s go from the bra burning, no shaving, no primping, no artifice of any kind, free thinkers of the 1960s to being a cosmetic surgeon's best friend?

I was looking at a picture of my grandmother the other day, my father's mother, Kay, who died in a fire when she was 73. She's 63 in the picture. This grandmother never left the house, even to hang the laundry, without looking her best. She wore pearls and a pretty dress even when she wasn't going anywhere. And she dyed her hair bright red and always wore lipstick and nail polish that matched.

In the black and white picture she is standing in our yard, her hair just so, her lipstick perfect, her dress fashionably off her shoulders. She worked hard at looking good and she succeeded. But she didn't look young, because you can't look young when you're old, no matter how hard you try.

I have another picture taken last year. It's of a woman in her 80s who's had everything done, the works. Her blond hair is nicely styled, she has a flawless smile and not a wrinkle on her face, neck or on her toned and tanned arms. You would guess that she's in her 50s.

But if you met her it's not youth you'd see but a woman of undetermined age trying desperately to be young.

"Is that all there is?" Peggy Lee asked in a song. Is that all there is to us, smooth skin and a bright smile?

Sometimes when I'm with my granddaughter, Lucy, I forget that I'm not young anymore. I play with her. I make faces and sing songs. And then I hold her hand in mine and there they are my old hands next to her small, flawless ones.

I'd like to be young. Who wouldn't? But on the inside, not the outside. I'd like to dream away whole afternoons imagining a future where the world and everyone in it stayed just as it was - or how I believed it was. And only I grew up and changed. But there's no snake oil that can do this. No dermabrasion for the soul.

I never saw my grandmother's age because age doesn't exist to a child. My grandmother always looked pretty to me. She'd put on lipstick and say, "There, don't I look better now?" She'd do her hair and say, "See? What a difference."

I didn't see.

"Body enhancement." "Anti-aging surgery." "Undo birthdays." We're being huckstered into a theater of the absurd, the Age of Aquarius - "mystic crystal revelation and the mind's true liberation" - not a sea change after all. Just an old song that nobody sings anymore.