On the launch of umpteen Anti-aging Products and what that means for women

The first page on Google search for “anti-aging” contains an 80% of nothing else but product ads. And if you are not skeptic enough, you might think that this world is real and that that’s all there is to it. Equally annoying is the range of ads that declare that there is “one weird anti-aging trick that a housewife somewhere has discovered that has made doctors angry!” But what does skepticism even mean if you are convinced that you have to look pretty, young or lovely all the time?

As testimony to the fact that many women amongst us are convinced and converted, skeptic or not, the beauty industry runs into multi-billion dollars in the US and is growing in India at a rapid rate of 20% every year. Whether converted into buying a bunch of beauty products and visiting parlours or not, everyone did gasp when Madhuri Dixit danced with Ranbir Kapoor. She looked 18! It’s appalling to think that researchers are at work day and night just so we could look a little better at a party! Are there not more important things we need to be doing?

Yes and yet the range and influence of the anti-aging research-industry is enormous; it extends to preoccupations with immortality, an end to aging altogether and includes a number of hypotheses such as locating an anti-aging gene, finding a hormone that helps, restricting diet, the use of anti-oxidants, peptides and so on. Promises range from “turn back the clock”, “look upto 10 years younger” to “youthful skin in 5 mins” or “30 seconds” even! “Great skin or get your money back” “take the challenge now” and on and on it goes. Websites that explain their technology accompanied by “it changed my life” testimonials are on the rise now, more than ever. We are bombarded with products to use in our teens, in our 20s, 30s and later, on TV all the time. The side effects debate has either died down or has been overpowered. But the question still remains for those who care to ask: are the Fair and Lovely scholarships for girls enough to absolve it of all its sins? Let’s hear some women out.

Many of the women I interviewed for this feature simply said that using anti-aging products are a woman’s preference. That women may or may not use these products; they are expensive and so few actually can and those who want to, should.  They also suggested that women were to a great extent responsible for their preoccupation with looks. Like for instance, Sarada Balaji, Fulbright scholar and Professor of English at an esteemed university in Andhra Pradesh points out “Women do it since they are themselves inclined to look eternally young. Moreover, they are easily influenced when they see other women do it.”  But that was just the way the discussion began. My interviewees were quick to point to other issues that are important. Archana Bhat, a PhD in Psychology from Mysore University, says “Looking young is one expression of feeling young, but the danger is in the unrealistic expectations and obsession with this concept. Men and women alike need to accept the process of aging as a natural phenomenon. A youthful feeling comes not only from good skin but also physical and mental fitness. A balanced, un-obsessed approach is a very healthy one.” I was especially impressed by Bhat’s thoughts because she was not condemning the use of beautification products as many people often do. People who condemn the use of beauty products are often taking a moralistic position, overlooking the psychological needs that women have in the here and now. This was so marked that while I was growing up, women wearing lipsticks would be dubbed sluts.

But then, celebrating one’s self cannot be so bad after all. As Bhat says “Looking and feeling young is a state of psychological well-being and no culture should have a problem with that. With life expectancy being so high, it is obvious that the 30s are the new young. The feeling of youth remains in many but the body often lags behind in the race…” While Bhat says that she does use anti-aging creams, she has no irrational expectations from them and uses them because they help skin to remain conditioned and fresh. Balaji also continued: “I appreciate make up on others but feel reluctant to have it on me.” Being a mother of two girls, which leaves any working Indian woman with little time, she says, “I do not use any anti-aging creams. I am basically too lazy for all this. However, I do use natural ingredients like pure aloe vera gel for my face.”

Yes, celebrating one’s self cannot be so bad after all. But the definition of ‘self’ or what mattered for “inner beauty” I found was different for different women. For instance, Balaji pointed out that although a beautiful woman attracts the attention of men and women, it is short-lived if it is not matched with the right attitude and intelligence. So attitudes and intelligence emerge as crucial here. Dr Lavanya Seshashayee, with a PhD in Women’s Studies, however says: “external beauty does help in feeling good but is far from being the summum bonum of one’s life purpose.” Speaking of the positives that beautification could lend to women, she says, “a strong self-image does wonders to one's confidence and this can happen only with meaningful work that a woman engages in.” Work (career) and a life purpose seem to be at the core of her thoughts.  

Beauty, not in the eyes of the beholder, but in the eyes of patriarchy.

Seshashayee clarifies that she is not talking about housework. She insists that we are a patriarchal culture and hence the “fixation with enhancing looks” should go.

Meghana Shivanand, English Lecturer at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore is not unaware of the politics of patriarchy either. She says that “Women are compared to each other in the institution of the family (for e.g. sisters-in-law, daughters-in-law) and so each one wants to look better and younger in the family.” The marriage market is yet another place where beauty is made extremely important. To be dark or old is the worst sin here! Your ‘value’ would go down. You would have to marry beneath you, unless you had other things to compensate, like money, good education or a sound family background (meaning no divorces or single parents). As a wife, if you are not beautiful, you would have to “overdo” things in some way to make “deal” worthwhile. For instance, a woman would have to sacrifice more in order to please her husband and his family so they would “forgive” her lack of beauty. As if beauty was a thing we could each sculpt out for ourselves! And career-oriented women today are marrying late, which only increases the pressure on them to look young all the more. A whole lot of other women are simply ‘trophy wives’ to the well-paid spouses who don’t “need” their wives to have careers. Newer subjectivities in vogue prompt frequent pictures on Facebook, which serve to project a sense of well-being. All of this has for many meant trying hard to look young!  

Shivanand hits the nail on the head when she says: “Looking good has come to mean looking young! The pressure has hit almost all spheres of women’s lives, be it professional or personal.” Shivanand views women’s work productivity as a measure of confidence.  Poignantly she says, “Women should not use these creams because they will become dependent on external sources to boost their confidence and thus lose their sense of inner worth and focus. Instead of channelizing time, energy and money into something meaningful, women will be stuck with beauty and it is ridiculous that these beauty enhancing creams have cast such a dark shadow on many women that it is impossible for them to think otherwise.”  

In my travels, I have come across European women with bright wise eyes and young skin and have loved their eyes more. What do the men in their life tell them exactly, I have wondered. It’s not unusual that notions of beauty are often justified in the name of health and well-being. Somewhere, it seems, everybody knows that beauty as a criteria cannot be wished away. Most of the women I spoke with confessed to using beauty products, though not always anti-aging ones. Their honesty and awareness is amazing. Shivanand writes to me as an addendum: “The pressure of looking good is so strong that I might still go in for facials and other beauty enhancing agents!” Others recommended natural agents, home-made products and yoga to substitute for an industry created product that could compromise your health. While many women said that it was women’s responsibility to accept aging, yet others placed importance on the male gaze that drove women to despise aging.

Dr Nikhila Haritsa, Professor of Film Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, says that there is no point in putting the entire onus on women. Instead, she says “If the yardsticks of assessing women were not men's, or if men's way of viewing women changes, there may be some hope.” The culture of younger looking skin is creating another ‘problem with no name’, except, this time women may be conscious and willing participants in it. When I mentioned actresses like Priyanka Chopra who appear on talk shows and claim that all is well because people want to see their bodies, Haritsa says Chopra is not any kind of representative woman to worry about: “She thinks that she is doing her job/being professional. If we take her as our model, it is our problem.” One of the important times in our life when no amount of immunity suffices is in childhood. As students, we are likely to remember classmates criticized for their dark complexion. A friend remembers how his teacher pulled up a friend to show how dark Africans were! I despair now to think of the insensitive times we have lived in.

Bodies don’t matter

Manon Foucraut, a student at the Shrishti School of Arts and Design, Bangalore, in her Master’s thesis (2013) argues that there has been a westernization of beauty standards in India so much so that there are now common references across cultures in advertising, magazines, brand development and so on. Exploring notions of beautification in ancient/medieval India, she suggests that they may not have had as many physical preoccupations as they do today. The bindi had a spiritual significance; jewellery enhanced health and worked at least partly on the principles of Acupuncture. And the ‘self’ therein was itself perceived differently. We were not our bodies; bodies didn’t matter. My friend and researcher on ethnicity, Bitasta Das, when discussing the steps taken by the women’s movement to resist the objectification of women took me onto completely track. She recalled one experience: “I was doing field work in the villages of Assam when one illiterate Bodo woman asked why I speak of equal rights for men and women while the life running in them both is the same.” Das tells me that this is her idea of how feminism is and should be. This life is ‘prana’ in traditional Indian terminology.

Thinking some more on the different notions of selfhood reminds me of the bitter fights the issue of beautification would cause between my mother and me. As a child, I wanted to dress her up. She was disinterested, no amount of pleading would make her concede and I would end up weeping. Uncannily similar to how Shashi Deshpande describes in her novel, The Dark holds no Terrors, I wanted my mother to plait my hair a certain way, and she couldn’t. Like the daughter in a heel-softening ad, I would urge her to apply this or that, in vain. These fights are for no one to judge. They are a sweet memory now with a unique pain attached to them that only other women, other mothers-daughters can understand. For my mother, what matters always are actions—the fulfillment of duties and responsibilities—and nothing else. I urge her to dress well even now. Across continents, when we speak on phone, I remind her to unearth this or that silk saree to wear on occasions. She forgets half my instructions about what to match with what. But the days she doesn’t, I feel like my day is made. Anti-aging creams and hair dyes are out of question for this woman. Having shouldered the responsibilities that my father wouldn’t, my mother looks older than she should. Two hoots to those judging because all I can see in her is enormous strength and a detachment, steady as a sheltered lamp’s. There lies her beauty. And she will never age for me.

As women, we need to explore different notions of selfhood as alternatives to the male gaze; and this detached-self model could among other things, counter it.  

Sushumna Kannan is a research scholar affiliated to San Diego State University, San Diego. 

(Longer version of article written for Women's Web)