As people age and their physical appearance changes from flawless skin and coloured hair to wrinkled skin and grey hair, society considers them to be less attractive. However, society should not judge someone by their physical appearance alone; depth of personality and knowledge should be the main factor dictating one’s attractiveness.
Society has created a standard by which people who do not look youthful are less beautiful. Anti-aging products, hair colouring treatments, and skin care cream sales are estimated to increase in revenue from 140.3 billion dollars in 2015 to 216.52 billion dollars in 2021 because older people feel that they need cosmetic products to make themselves look beautiful again (https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/10/26/882889/0/en/Anti-Aging-Market-Set-for-Rapid-Growth-to-Reach-216-52-Billion-Globally-by-2021-Zion-Market-Research.html). In fact, studies have shown that women in the workforce who wear makeup and look younger can make more than 30% more money than coworkers who do not wear makeup (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2013/03/20/you-are-judged-by-your-appearance/#19c74f1b30f0). The discrimination in the workforce against people who do not meet the ideal beauty standards results in less payment, so people who are aging feel the need to use anti-aging products to continue to make money.
In the short story “Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow” by Kurt Vonnegut (https://grade9english.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-full-text.pdf), it can be inferred that older people are more self-conscious about their appearance. A commercial stated, “Are you hampered socially by wrinkles, by stiffness of joints and discoloration or loss of hair...Well, if you are, you need no longer suffer, need no longer feel different and out of place” (Vonnegut 213). The commercial advertised super-anti-gerasone to people older than one hundred and fifty so that they will not feel like they are being judged by their appearance in public. Society has put so much emphasis on one’s physical appearance that products and cosmetic surgery procedures are being created to physically change people to conform to beauty standards. This info graph displays the use of anti-aging products and the cost of cosmetic anti-aging surgery (http://graphs.net/anti-aging-skin-care.html).
Society should equate attractiveness with one’s personality and wisdom rather than physical appearance. In Kathryn Clausnitzer Wilson’s poem “The Gift Wrap and The Jewel,” Wilson writes, “the years that spoil your gift wrap with other things more cruel should purify and strengthen and polish up that jewel” (Wilson 9-10). Wilson compares aging skin to gift wrap and one’s soul to a jewel. Aging will cause wrinkled skin, but aging should also make one’s soul richer and more interesting. People should not use anti-aging products because they are expensive and sometimes ineffective, and one’s soul, personality, and lifetime experiences defines someone more than their appearance.
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