Terry Prone: Beauty is skin deep, but negative attitudes to ageing run far deeper

The signs of age are no longer seen as manifestations of a well-lived life and accreted wisdom, and so athletes and the super-rich are looking to turn back time.

'Ultra wealthy software entrepreneur' Bryan Johnson, 45, undertakes a variety of treatments provided by a range of medical specialists to beome more like an 18-year-old. Credit: Blueprint

It is somewhat unlikely that Novak Djokovic lives by Advice 38 from the Quaker Faith & Practice book, which says: “Do not let the desire to be sociable, or the fear of seeming peculiar, determine your decisions.” 

Novak, nevertheless, is low on the fear of seeming peculiar, which in one sense is good, but does lead to this crisp description of him by a tennis-loving friend: “He’s an arrogant, deeply unpleasant git with a huge tennis talent.” 

Now aged 35, Djokovic is unique in his commitment to making sure that his huge talent stays with him, including sometimes putting himself into a pressurised egg designed to enrich his blood with oxygen. Although he’s not noted for his inspirational public communication, it also appears that he gives pep talks to glasses of water. The objective of these warm chats is to infuse the water with positivity before swallowing it.

Novak Djokovic with the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup after defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece in the men's singles final at the Australian Open in Melbourne, Australia. Picture: Mark Baker/AP

Three years older than Djokovic, LeBron James is still going strong. But going strong is expensive. He apparently spends just shy of $2m on his body every year, although one American who isn’t even an elite athlete spends more.

Bryan Johnson. Picture: Blueprint

This guy, Brian Johnson, an “ultra wealthy software entrepreneur” aged 45, according to Bloomberg Business Week, is “on track to spend at least $2m on his body. He wants to have the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, tendons, teeth, skin, hair, bladder, penis and rectum of an 18-year-old." He undertakes a variety of treatments provided by a range of medical specialists and then gets his path back towards 18 measured. Progress is reported.

Bryan Johnson claims to be serving as a guinea pig for the whole world, although the way he’s going, anything emerging from his research into himself is most likely to be shared with the ultra-rich world. Djovovic and James, on the other hand, are trying to extend their working lives, because of course, neither has put enough in their pension to comfortably retire.

Bryan Johnson. Picture: Blueprint

The effort to extend the working life of the body overlaps with the effort to falsify the appearance in order to be taken for someone much younger. 

Historically, this has been a function of vanity, for the most part. Witness Goya’s horrifying painting of two old women examining their appearances in a mirror. 

Time and the Old Women, by Francisco Goya. pic.twitter.com/tmA3opx92F

— tav (@tavernofterrors) October 16, 2022

Goya shows them as having all the normal deterioration of age, like the bony upper chest and the skeletal hands, but throws in the Grim Reaper in the background and gives one of the two women the visible signs of syphilis. The moral of the picture seems to be that no matter how dyed and coiffed they are, they look as old as their years and shamefully ridiculous.

The issue of trying to look younger than you are may have much to do with vanity — otherwise we wouldn’t have so many clinics right around the country offering fillers and Botox — but it also relates to economic survival. 

Back in the closing days of slavery in America, a man named William Wells Brown wrote his memoirs. William was born into slavery, but escaped at the age of 19, and became a writer, historian, and abolitionist. In the account of his life, he tells how the greying hair and beards of aging slaves were “blacked” before they were sent out to be sold on the auction block. Purchasers wanted young men with the strength to (literally) slave all day in the cotton fields, and sellers wanted to convince potential buyers that they were offering men who were young — sure look at their dark hair!

While showbusiness cannot be equated to slavery, it is nonetheless a profession where your continued value to the market can depend on looking young. 

Cary Grant ruefully observed that “When people tell you how young you look, they are also telling you how old you are.”

Cary Grant in 1966. Picture: PA

Looking the best he could at whatever age he was kept Grant onscreen — like Michael Caine — long after other actors had chucked it in. Alan Rickman’s diaries are painfully replete with references to looking old — or, just as difficult — looking fat. Yet some of his worries were expressed when the role he was playing was that of an elderly wizard in the Harry Potter series, so, in theory, he needn’t have been worried about looking fit and young. But he was, he secretly was.

The paradox is that if you’re 30 or 40 when you get fillers or Botox injections, it’s regarded as being much the same as getting your hair highlighted, if somewhat more expensive, whereas if you’re in your 50s or 60s when you do the same thing — or, horror of horrors, have a facelift — then, if you are any kind of a celeb, you will be asked by some dewy-faced journalist of perhaps 25 if it wouldn’t be better to “grow old gracefully”. To which the answer is: “Ask yourself that question when you’re old enough to have people fail to recognise you and then excuse it on the basis that you ‘look a bit tired’, which is shorthand for ‘old as the hills.’” 

Because looking old — despite the haverings of the “growing old gracefully” brigade — is bad. It’s bad for your employment prospects and it’s bad for your self confidence. 

Nobody ever says to another person, in a tone of quiet admiration: “God, you look so OLD.”

Of course the signs of age should be seen as manifestations of a well-lived life and accreted wisdom. But they aren’t, and are arguably seen less in that light since the wisdom of older people was made redundant by Google. If you can look up what you might have asked your grandfather, why would you bother asking him, except maybe to flatter the old geezer. (“Old geezer” being an acceptable pejorative.) 

This applies to people whose appearance has never mattered because of the intellectual precision of their profession. Take former judge Gillian Hussey, who complains, in her autobiography ( Lessons From The Bench, Gill, 2022), of the ageism of others, compounded, if you’re female, by assumptions centred around your gender as well.

Former judge Gillian Hussey at Jigginstown Manor, a Tiglin facility for vulnerable young adults in Naas, Co Kildare, last year. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

“I was in hospital a few years ago for a hip operation, and two male nurses were in attendance. I was chatting with one of them when the anaesthetist came in and said: ‘You mustn’t be a good judge of character if you’re talking to him.’ I smiled and said: ‘That’s funny, because I was a judge.’ 

"With that, the whole atmosphere changed. I was suddenly treated with a new respect. It was interesting to observe. I moved out of the box marked ‘elderly lady’ and into the box marked ‘former judge’, and that changed their attitude towards me. 

"It’s amazing how often that happens — although long retired, my job still has the currency to buy me some respect. But really it should not be that way. I should receive respect for who I am as a person. But that seems to fade as you gather wrinkles and grey hairs, which is a sad thing for all of us.”