Is the aging body a betrayal?

When beauty culture gets ugly about the aging process.

No matter how I feel about my body, I’m still a sucker for a good diet or beauty ad. As a former marketing nerd, I love to analyze language, word choice, tone, messaging, target and tactics. I love to examine which ads work and which fall flat.

After researching GLP-1s for my piece last week on going fat in the time of Ozempic, Facebook has been working overtime to deliver me all the GLP-1 and “lose weight in menopause” ads—and it’s not even January yet! So it was a little surprising when this body oil ad snuck in.

It caught my eye because the opening “hook” was so far from my personal experience (remember, only the first couple of lines of text initially show until you expand the ad).

“I worshipped my body in my younger days (and so did a lot of guys), but as I got older, I noticed my skin starting to betray me…” it read.

I certainly didn’t worship my body in my younger days, and I wouldn’t say the guys did either, so I was immediately intrigued—who is this ad targeting?—but then it referenced aging and “betraying” skin.

Are there women who really believe their skin is betraying them?

I did a quick run through the major stuff I’m dealing with in perimenopause now—memory issues, difficulty concentrating, crying jags, night sweats, anxiety and 3 a.m. wake-ups (thankfully, the last three have been eased with hormone therapy). Loose skin isn’t even on the radar, and no, thank you, it won’t be just because I saw one ad about it on Facebook.

But with all the shifts happening, I have plenty of feelings about this time in my life. Frustration? Absolutely. Anger? Sometimes, when it feels like my body and mind aren’t cooperating or when I lose yet another thing not attached to my body. Sadness? Occasionally, when I catch myself mourning the ease of what once was. But betrayal? This is not a word I would use to describe how I feel.

My body isn’t a lover who scorned me or a best friend who turned against me. Even on my hardest days, I know it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Aging is hard, but it’s not a betrayal. I was never promised eternal life, or even eternal youth; I’ve been under no illusion that I could stay—or look—25 forever. This is the natural process of aging, messy and inconvenient as it may be. (And the irony here is this company claims to sell “natural, organic and vegan” hair and skin products.)

This ad plays on the fears so many women carry—the fear of losing youth, beauty, and vitality. But it takes it a step further, painting the bodies’ natural aging process—our thinner, looser skin—as a reason to deny ourselves simple pleasures like the feeling of a silk blouse or another’s touch and robbing us of the confidence we used to have. I think this is what makes me most angry.

Buy the body oil, the ad promises, and take back your life.

I’ll give you this, it’s got a target:

• She’s married—her husband noticed a difference when she started using the oil.

• She’s had 25 years in skincare, which puts her maybe 35 to 50 years old.

• She’s got a silk blouse hanging in the closet that’s been collecting dust, which suggests she’s a professional working woman or a woman of a certain class.

But I think, even more implicitly, it’s targeting a woman who has always been praised for her beauty. Because I imagine when your sense of self has been so strongly tied to being admired and desired, aging can feel like a betrayal. And I don’t want to minimize this or make it sound shallow—it’s not just wrinkles, extra pounds, or gray hairs—it’s a loss of identity, power even.

Even as someone who has never viewed herself as conventionally attractive, I’m not immune to these worries. There are parts of me I don’t love—spots and wrinkles and fleshy pieces. I do care how I look, despite how much I strive not to. And while how I look is lower on the priority list than how I feel, at least most days, I still have vulnerable moments when I look in the mirror, don’t love what I see, and want a solution. Or at least a sense of control.

When it comes to our bodies, I feel like most of the women I know in midlife are caught somewhere between warring and accepting. Some of us are so distraught over our changing bodies and the loss of beauty—and therefore visibility—that we’ll do anything to regain it, while others see these changes as the chance to finally slip the shackles of society’s expectations. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.

The loss of youth forces all of us to attention, and somehow we’re made to feel both ashamed of our changing bodies and alone in our experience. It’s why ads like these are particularly odious. But it’s also why there is so much power in challenging the standards and sharing our personal experiences.

The truth is, we don’t need miracle products to regain confidence. What we need is permission to see women as more than their outward appearance and aging not as a betrayal, but a natural part of life—a stage with its own wisdom, strength, and beauty.

What has been your experience navigating the changes that come with aging? How have you handled the expectations versus reality? What do you find most infuriating about how you’re marketed to at this stage in your life? I’d love to hear your thoughts!