As the clock struck and glasses clinked, we toasted the new. But in a new year we also turn one year older, and for many this brings – along with the prosecco and champagne – bubbles of anxiety.
Of course the fear of ageing isn't a recent phenomenon: methods of "rejuvenation" can be traced back to Plato, while the idea of the "Fountain of Youth" was popularised in the time of Alexander the Great. What's different today, though, is how early anxieties about ageing set in.
A study of 2,000 women conducted by Superdrug in 2012 found that women start to worry about the signs of ageing at 29. According to my own research, such fears are commonly expressed today by much younger women and, increasingly, men. Carrie, who is 25 and works in a department store, reports that almost all of her friends except her have already had Botox. Becky, a 23-year-old student, says: "I've got two really bad wrinkles on my forehead, and am wondering what to do about them. I've also noticed a few of my friends starting to get crow's feet. We're all discussing it."
But these two are positively breezy in comparison to the anguished voices on the online messageboards. This one is typical: "Oh so I'm only in my mid-20s but already I'm beginning to fear ageing because my late 20s will be upon me soon enough. Now that I'm getting closer and closer to 30, I am beginning to panic." Scarlett Johansson admitted that she started using anti-ageing products at 20. There are now so many adolescents getting injected with Botox that it even has its own name, "Teen Toxing". Body dysmorphia – a distorted sense of one's body and appearance – used to be considered an individual psychological problem. Today, propelled at least partly by a fear of ageing, it has become a cultural condition. We're constantly told that 60 is the new 40; more likely, as regards anxieties about getting older, the new 40 is actually 25.
This is roughly when a major shift occurs. Children and teenagers long to grow older and acquire the greater freedom and privileges that come with ageing. It used to be your 21st but now it's your 18th – the birthday that shouts "Finally!" Somewhere in our 20s, though, anticipation turns into dread: from looking down on those younger than us (in the family, at school), we start to look down on those older.
What has brought about this "youthening" of anxiety? The cosmetic industry, through targeted marketing, has certainly played a role. Customers are now segmented by age, and the anti-ageing market has been extended at both ends, with new products for "mature" skin, but also anti-ageing creams for twentysomethings. Ads intone: "From age 25, breathe new life into skin cells with a first-wrinkle anti-ageing program", or claim to address "the first signs of ageing … 25+". The US supermarket chain Walmart has even introduced a skincare line, Geo-Girls, for "tweens" – eight- to 12-year-old girls – that includes "anti-ageing" creams containing antioxidants.
Of course, the manufacturers of anti-ageing products need to foster anxieties about ageing to be able to promise to dispel them: fear maximises profits, and if there isn't enough of it about – well, they'll just have to seed some more. In an era where the body has become a major cultural currency, and the failure to tend it a moral transgression, the rich, multi-faceted experience of ageing has been pathologised and reduced to shame about looking old. We're living longer, healthier lives than any previous generation but, curiously, worrying about ageing younger. This means that we are going to be worried for an awfully long time.
Sociologist Mike Featherstone has talked of a "pornography of old age", a luxuriating in disgust at old flesh. From Nora Ephron's book about the "indignities" of ageing, I Feel Bad About My Neck, to 40-year-old model Heidi Klum's recent Halloween costume – latex makeup transforming her into a supposedly grotesque old woman with liver spots, varicose veins and wrinkles – women have been recruited as agents of their own objectification.
But never underestimate the egalitarianism of the market: today, increasingly, men are also targeted by anti-ageing advertising. All that "older men are distinguished" talk is beginning to sound so analogue. When Gordon Ramsay resorted to plumping out the crevasses in his forehead and chin with filler at 41, you knew something was afoot. Cosmetic surgeons report a surge in procedures requested by men who've been made redundant or fear competition from younger men. A plethora of new products and services have been tailored for them, like the "new anti-age system engineered for men to keep skin looking younger" – words such as "system" and "engineered" making them sound properly unfeminine.
Of course the polarisation of old and young rests on a fallacy, if not a downright lie: that all young people possess perfect skin and gleaming hair, have non-stop sex, are bursting with energy and are never lonely. The denigration of age is built upon the idealisation of youth, and both do violence to reality. Being young is rarely as unconflicted, nor old as wretched, as the stereotypes would have us believe. We know from experience that we are not invariably happy, dynamic and beautiful when we are young, so why should we believe that these attributes are immediately reversed when we hit 40 or 50? States of mind and the conditions of our lives are permanently in flux, at every stage of life, young as well as old.
In my book, How to Age, I suggest that the two main ways in which ageing is represented are actually aspects of the same gerontophobia, the dread of growing old and hostility to old people. One sees ageing as an inexorable process of decline, and old people as purely a burden, a drain on resources. According to this model, the moment we hit 60 (or 50, or 40 – take your pick), we become nothing but old – all other characteristics, idiosyncrasies and personal history erased. Who wouldn't be scared? (Especially since advanced industrial societies no longer value experience; what counts is a cheap, flexible workforce.) To the rescue rides age denial, the second approach, which claims that age has been eradicated by baby boomers, with their grey gap years, collagen implants and Pilates. This way of thinking regards ageing and death as a personal affront, a narcissistic wound. New Age guru Deepak Chopra invites his followers to become pioneers in a land where "old age, senility, infirmity and death do not exist and are not even entertained as a possibility". Now where would that be – la-la land?
Because age is so stigmatised in our culture, we disidentify with old people – they may have aged, but we sure as hell won't. Such disavowal can occur at any age. A 61-year-old woman, responding to a Mass Observation survey, observed: "If I go into a room and all around me I see grey heads, I tend to assume that I'm in a gathering of the elderly – for one awful moment I stereotype a lot, forgetting honestly that I am among their number." This is like people who say: "I don't feel old", as though there were some special feeling that age brings, instead of just being themselves but older.
The disidentification with old people is one reason for the extent of "elder abuse". Those caring for old people, whether relatives or in residential care, are more likely to treat them carelessly or abusively after years of exposure to stereotypes that effectively dehumanise them. On the other hand, if we accepted that we, too, will one day become old, we would be clamouring for generous pay and good conditions for those who might have to help look after us.
If the first model of ageing sees age as everything, to the second, age is nothing. But there is a third way, one that resists ageism but not age, part of an age-acceptance movement that embraces the process of growing older, discovering in the process that life can become more exciting and enriching as we age. But to start down that road, we need to dismantle some of the ubiquitous misthinking about age. Ageing isn't something that happens to us in the second half of our life: it's a lifelong process. We age from the moment we are born. In this sense, ageing is another word for living; to be anti-age is to be anti-life.
This third approach to ageing recognises what reams of research have confirmed: that we become more diverse as we age. Far from age obliterating any other aspect of our lives, those other aspects – social class, income, ethnicity – become more, not less, important over time. Growing older is a very different experience if you don't have to worry about heating bills or the bedroom tax.
If we are prepared to peer beyond the stereotypes, we find that ageing, just like the rest of life, is a mixture of gains and losses. There are losses associated with every stage of our lives: we may long to be free of the tyranny of school or a job, for instance, but grieve over the loss of the structure they provide. Throughout the lifecycle, mourning is an essential human task, freeing up a space in which new qualities and experiences can develop.
For what is hidden in our culture are the gains associated with ageing. Most older people say they care far less what other people think of them. When the American poet May Sarton was asked why it was good to be old, she replied: "Because I am more myself than I have ever been." The people I interviewed say that they have learned to live life more fully, to savour it, and are better able to weather crises (though they still have crises, despite that other stereotype of ageing: serenity).
Perhaps the greatest calumny committed against old people – and the one that most frightens the not-yet-old – is the belief that ageing causes us to leech vitality. Let's not get too Pollyanna here: most people find their energy levels changing as they age, and have to learn to pace themselves. But physical and psychic vitality, though they may be related, especially if you're fighting pain, are not the same thing. The idea that one's appetite for life automatically abates with the passing of the years is simply wrong. On the contrary, it often increases.
One of the most delicious accounts of how growing older can mean growing more engaged was written by Florida Scott-Maxwell, the American-born playwright, suffragette and analyst. In 1968, when she was 85, she wrote: "Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My 70s were interesting and fairly serene, but my 80s are passionate. I grow more intense as I age. To my own surprise, I burst out with hot conviction … I must calm down. I am far too frail to indulge in moral fervour."
People can revitalise themselves at any age; we can go on learning and developing until our final breath. When a 90-year-old British woman was asked why she volunteered, she replied succinctly: "Personal growth." Perhaps this is why they call it growing old.
"Owning" the ageing process instead of fighting it makes it easier to value our older selves, and reclaim – both individually and together – a sense of the lifecycle. Without, I hope, falling back on glib mantras or slogans from the manual of positive thinking, I believe there has never been a better time to age, to challenge the narrative of decline and age-denial and to celebrate longevity.
As for those young people panicking over ageing, listen to Maggie Kuhn, fabulous founder of the campaigning group the Gray Panthers. Her 30th birthday was her worst, she recalled – when she was 85 – and her battlecry, "Learning and sex until rigor mortis", is as welcome today as ever.
