What’s so wrong with looking your age?

Do you feel a burning desire to look young? Do you feel pressure to look younger than you are? There is an obsession in the media today with people – particularly women – desperately trying to make themselves look younger than they actually are.

Everywhere you look, women in the spotlight are undergoing plastic surgery and procedures like Botox, in a never-ending fight against the ageing process. And we’re all made to feel like it’s something we should be doing. But why on earth is this happening, and is it something we all feel the need to do?

A recent study by the London College of Fashion (LCF) found that four out of five women’s beauty regimes were not designed to make them look younger, but rather to keep them looking, simply, “good”

The findings, published in the Daily Mail, accentuates the idea that women over 60 don’t wish to be bombarded with anti-ageing product advertising and are actually generally pretty happy with their appearance.

Researcher Dr Carolyn Mair said: “Research shows they [women] don’t want to be the target of ‘age-defying’ and ‘youth-promoting’ messages.”

Speaking to the British Psychological Society conference, Dr Mair went on: “Despite media and advertising images of unattainable, airbrushed beauty and messages equating youth with beauty, the majority said they wanted to look good, not younger.”

Which all makes perfect sense. Despite what Hollywood would have us believe, most of us are well aware that the ageing process is perfectly natural, and that a few lines here and there (or even a multitude of them!) are really just evidence a life well lived. We don’t want to have to get up before the crows in order to apply 15 layers of various “age-defying” products, and then sit in a cold room with cucumber on our eyes.

Hollywood actress Sharon Stone (pictured above), who is 56, said in an interview with Shape magazine earlier this year: “This idea that being youthful is the only thing that’s beautiful or attractive simply isn’t true. I don’t want to be an ‘ageless beauty.’ I want to be a woman who is the best I can be at my age.”

She went on: “I’m not trying to make myself look like a girl because I’m not a girl anymore. I’m very happy about being a grown woman.”

A refreshing outlook and one that, it would seem, most women share.

Let us know your thoughts on ageing and the obsession in today’s world with women having to look younger than they are. Do you like to take care of your appearance or have a strict beauty regime? Or do you say “to hell with it” and enjoy life without worrying about your looks? Tell us in the comments below…