Richard Hogan: Shame on Vogue for promoting the idea that women should not grow old — ageing is beautiful

Vogue magazine should not have airbrushed 1990s supermodels, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington. It would have been so empowering to show these women celebrating the aging process, unfiltered in middle age.

Naomi Campbell speaks on stage during 2018 Global Citizen Festival: Be The Generation in Central Park

“YOU look great, for 60.” Ah, the old Irish compliment wrapped up in an ageist jibe. 

All this talk about inclusion, but we still shame people for growing old. 

The recent controversy over Vogue magazine’s airbrushing of 1990s supermodels, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington, once again brought the spotlight on how we view the ageing process.

Why did Vogue feel the need to airbrush a picture of women in middle age? Instead of presenting them as they are, beautifully imperfect, it presented this cartoonish image of unageing women. 

Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington on the front cover of the September issue of British Vogue. 

How empowering would the message have been for teenage girls and women, if they could see these once-paragons of beauty celebrating the ageing process by presenting themselves as they are, unfiltered in middle age? No. We couldn’t do that. 

We don’t want women to actually love themselves. We certainly don’t want them to celebrate themselves as they grow old. Then they wouldn’t buy all these products we have waiting to sell to the disillusioned masses.

It is shameful, that we make women feel like they should not age. There is nothing more beautiful than celebrating who you are, truth is beauty and beauty truth. 

When you lie about your age, you are denying yourself a celebration of who you are at that particular time in your life. That is a terrible shame. 

You will never be as young as you are today, what would it be like to truly embrace and celebrate who you are, right now?

And if we changed our ideas about ageing, would it make us more comfortable in our own skin? Would you be less likely to delete that family photo, because you feel you look terrible in it? 

How many of us reading this, enjoy having our picture taken? If we really analysed that dislike of pictures what would we find? More than likely, the social construction of beauty. 

I remember the first time I really got an insight into how society creates what we hold as beautiful. I was in the Philippines looking for soap. But every shop I went into only had soap with whitening in it. 

Incredulously, I asked the shopkeeper what was the deal with all the soap having whitening in it. He told me that all the girls want to be white, but he struggled to comprehend what I told him next, in Ireland girls put on tan because they want to be brown.

Immediately, I saw it in full view; girls with brown skin want to be white and girls with white skin want to be brown and none of them are comfortable in their own skin. 

We go through life never fully celebrating who we are or what stage of life we are in. And Vogue’s airbrushing of middle-aged supermodels allowed the murky hidden presence of ageism to be seen in all its garish form. 

Shame on Vogue for promoting the idea that women should not grow old and that ageing is not beautiful. 

There is nothing more beautiful than growing old, you have lived and have wisdom from experience, and you have not been mowed down by the arsenal the Grim Reaper has at his disposal. 

That alone should make us celebrate growing old. Imagine living in a society that worshipped ageing like it worships youth. 

It wouldn’t be the sorrow of your changing face but the beauty of your changing face.

It is this constant desire for perfection and filtered images that causes our children so much suffering. It disturbs all of our joy. 

I see it so often in my clinic; wonderful teenage girls, desperately unhappy with how they look. 

I find myself so frustrated because this gift they have, life, this absolute miracle is being tainted by society and how it presents body image and beauty. 

I have noticed over the years how teenagers are consumed by every aspect of their body.

One girl told me, through sobbing, that her friend had told her she had, “gappy eyelashes”. 

When I recounted this story to my daughter, about this wonderful and beautiful girl I had worked with who let the words of her friends hurt her so deeply, my daughter immediately said, “Oh, all she needs to do to stop gappy eyelashes is...” I stopped her and explained she had missed the point, she shouldn’t listen to the negative words of others and more importantly, she should celebrate how she looks.

Richard Hogan. Pic: Moya Nolan

I think we are at crisis point with our children. Never in the history of our species have we compared ourselves to others as much. 

Every day is like a gladiatorial contest for teenage girls. They post up an image of themselves getting ready for school, sitting at the bus stop, or whatever they’re doing, and then they wait. ‘Gorgeous hun’, ‘stunning’, ‘omg your hair’, ‘eyelashes to die for xxx’, but if someone doesn’t quite say something positive, they collapse. 

So, all their images are processed through some sort of filter, because they don’t value how they truly look. They believe how they look in reality will not garner the desired response. Now, how sad is that! And what an indictment on our time. 

That we have made our children believe they must be without blemish to be valued.

We should celebrate ageing because not all of us get to do it. Making people feel shameful for going through one of the most important and beautiful phases of human life is the real shame. 

Vogue had a responsibility to show the truth about aging and to promote the message, ageing is beautiful and a natural part of the human experience. But it failed miserably. 

Shame on Vogue.