“Isn’t that out of Star Wars?” I am battling confusion at the Anti-Ageing Health and Beauty Show, where a tall young man has stopped me to talk about the trillions of mitochondria in my cells, and how their numbers drop off dramatically past the age of 10. They sound like the microscopic organisms that allow their host body to detect the presence of The Force. “Oh no, that’s midi-chlorians,” I realise.
We’re on the huge floor of the Olympia exhibition centre, where stalls stretch out in every direction, and the scent of snake oil is rising. People are hawking bamboo serums, marine plant extracts, quinoa gels, powders that look like ground-up kryptonite, which Elle Macpherson loves. There are anti-hair-loss helmets, caviar face masks, crystal healing sets. They may as well be selling magic lichen drenched in an elephant’s dream.
On the way in, nobody checks the ticket I’ve bought. The first stall I encounter offers me a special chocolate that will make me look radiant if I eat it every day, which I desperately want to believe. “How does it work?” I ask.
“It’s like a smartphone,” the salesperson replies.
This is a place where language has broken down. The printed claims behind each stall are either totally meaningless (promises of a “younger you” and generic “health promotion”) or bamboozlingly medical (the chocolate leaflet informs me “Epicatechin Polyphenol Crystals are clearly visible in Astaxanthine micelles”. And I thought Snickers had a lot going on.) It’s a gigantic word scramble in which the terms collagen, anti-oxidant, and free radical are shuffled around and made stranger each time. One stall promotes de-ionised water, while the next sells you specially ionised cream.
If you find yourself weakened by nonsense, there are beds everywhere. If you lie in them however, you will be slathered in gel or acupunctured or diagnosed by a face-reading expert who can tell you that cheek lines appear when you’re not living fully in the present.
I decide I need to try something, before I dismiss everything. Light-emitting diode therapy is big this year. This consists of wearing a full plastic facemask with fairy lights on the inside, which rejuvenate cells and accelerate healing. I strap one on and lie swaddled in a green towel for 15 minutes, like Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre on a spa break. I emerge feeling relaxed, because lying down is nice. I don’t look younger, though.
Strapping Christmas lights to your face and taking a disco nap is as sensible as contents insurance, compared with some of the other treatments on offer. I make my way to the Grace Kelly stage – there is also a Marilyn Monroe stage and Audrey Hepburn stage – to watch a demonstration of Dracula therapy, advanced by Doctor Sister. (Many of the clinicians’ names remind me of Simpsons characters; there’s Dr Harpal Bains, Pam Cushing Aspire and Dr Marko Lens, eye specialist.)
Daniel Sister specialises in Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy, injecting his patients with their own blood to stimulate collagen and heal scars. “It also works on hair loss and vagina rejuvenation.” Holy guacamole, get me some of that Kool-Aid! He can’t give us a demonstration – he fractured his wrist at the show yesterday, and can barely hold the microphone. Instead, he mumbles about activating blood platelets by spinning, flicking rapidly through slides depicting autogenous bone transplants, the patients’ eyes creepily whited out. A woman raises her hand to ask more about how it actually works. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
“If we go out to dinner and I only want one dish but I won’t tell you what that dish is; how do you make sure I get my dish?” is part of his answer. “You order everything on the menu.” I think I’ll pass on a date with Dr Sister.
The relentless sales patter is comical but exhausting.
“People have been worried that stimulating stem cells might increase carcinogenic risk – the good news is it doesn’t,” says Dr Sister.
“Does andropause, the male menopause, exist?” asks someone selling testosterone supplements. “I would say yes.”
“What if I told you we have techniques to melt your fat away, to freeze your fat, that use radiowaves to shatter your fat? It sounds too good to be true!” smiles a spokesperson from a leading cosmetic dermatology clinic. “Thankfully, it is true!” I feel like Indiana Jones at the Temple of Bullshit.
If the dusty grail of everyouth is in the building, you’d never know it, due to the babble. It’s impossible to sift the wheat from the chaff, though someone here has surely monetised the chaff. I sit at a bench with a mechanical arm shining a whitening laser on to my teeth (which does work), watching stalls selling corrective strips that lift the earlobes (which looks useful), next to a table displaying wizard’s bracelets (which use magnets to accelerate the body’s haemoglobin). A few modest products here are fine, most are stretching an iota of scientific fact into overpriced miracle claims, while others are as medically verifiable as a leprechaun’s kiss.
A woman stops me in the aisle, offering tarot and palmistry readings.
“As a beauty treatment?” I ask incredulously.
“No,” she says indignantly, as if I’m the weird one. “It’s fortune-telling.” I don’t really know what she’s doing here. But to be fair, I don’t know what I’m doing here either.
It all feels weirdly standardised, and impenetrable. Women in lab coats and high heels smile in front of medical smokescreens. There is evangelical, anecdotal testimony, from patients who have literally had the scales fall from their eyes, and under-eye area. Any celebrity tie-in is trumpeted. “I’ve done the Made In Chelsea guys, and David Cameron,” boasts one makeup artist.
The comperes constantly bring exhibitors up on stage, who arrive, talk and leave to little or no applause, like comedians dying. They make their presentations, promising quantum science and military-grade technology to combat saddlebags, muffin tops and bingo wings. There is a background hum of sadness under the artificial excitement. Some of the women who have travelled here today – and it is almost exclusively women, because men are allowed to grow old – are over 50, but more are significantly younger, taught to fear the natural processes of their bodies as soon as they become aware of them.
I’m wearied by this emphasis on the miraculous. No one mentions entropy or death; the nemeses everyone here, everyone everywhere, is trying to outsmart. Futility is inbuilt at the anti-ageing show. You may as well be anti-the number five, or the sun. I have a very strong urge to be outside. On my way to the exit, a woman stops me to embrocate the back of my hand with gel. “So?” I ask, waiting to be told about iontophoresis, or sold a £100 vial of fruit juice.
“Actually, your skin is fine. Just drink more water, and go to bed earlier.” She says, as if taking pity. “And use suncream,” she adds. Someone has spoken to me in plain English. It feels like the first miracle of the day.
