I’m turning 40 in 304 days (not that I’m counting), and while many women my age are quietly pricing Botox treatments, I’ve spent a genuinely alarming amount of time feeding selfies into AI to see what I’ll look like at 80. Just me, my laptop, and a face that’s seen it all and is mildly disappointed in my children’s life choices. (By then they’ll be middle-aged. I’m really fun at parties, I promise.)
Anyway, imagine my unhinged delight when 32-year-old rapper Bad Bunny rocked up to the Met Gala as if he’d stepped out of my AI prompt – a silver fox on the waiting list for hip replacement surgery, in a look he said “took 53 years to prepare”. While other celebrities were beating the “beauty is youth” drum with Olympic-level intensity, including what looked suspiciously like Kendall Jenner’s massive wardrobe malfunction, Bad Bunny’s interpretation on the Gala’s theme “Fashion is Art” was a balm to my midlife soul.
Most people might find an AI-generated picture of their elderly selves terrifying, on par with unexpectedly flicking your phone’s camera to selfie mode – like my brother, who on receipt of his own geriatric portrait quipped with characteristic jollity: “Hopefully we’ll all be nuked by then.”
But I love my elderly visage. Here’s a face that’s seen it all: raised teenagers, survived a million WhatsApp groups, loved hard, worried hard and earned the dignity of someone who’s had a hysterectomy. My elder selfie is a doppelganger of my mum, who has aged well. Credit where credit is due: thanks for the genetic lottery win, Mum.
But Bad Bunny isn’t the first to make gravity great again. There’s been a slew of gloriously ageing models gracing the swanky catwalks lately. Chanel, Bottega Veneta, Tom Ford, and Givenchy have all been yanking “elderly” (in the fashion world, anyone over 30, God help us all) models out of back catalogues and sending them Zimmer frame-ing down the catwalk. Not to mention Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep turning up on the cover of Vogue in honour of The Devil Wears Prada 2. Can anyone say “cross-promotion”?
Still, progress is progress, and I’m thrilled it’s arriving as I wade into my full-blown to-Botox-or-not-to-Botox era. As Vanessa Friedman wrote in The New York Times, these older faces stand out “in a world where viewers are inundated with images in which every sign of age – every wrinkle, hollow, age spot – has been filled in, tightened, filtered, lifted or otherwise erased”.
Old age feels like the final frontier in radical acceptance – look at the contrast between Bad Bunny and Kris Jenner who’s cryogenically frozen herself in 2012.
Or US billionaire Bryan Johnson, whose one-man quest to defeat ageing has taken on biblical proportions, with gene therapy, plasma transfusions and a daily regime that puts Gwyneth Paltrow to shame. Bad Bunny (or should I call him Bad Rabbit?) cosplaying a man who might yell “Get off my lawn!” isn’t groundbreaking. He’s showing us that he got the assignment: Fashion is Art.
Old age is a luxury, an art form – worth more than a Chanel handbag. I’ve known a few peers who never made it to their 40th birthday, which puts the whole “to Botox or not” into perspective.
It’s deeply unsexy to talk about inner beauty, unless you’re in a Dove commercial, but there’s something quietly radical about taking 80 years (if you’re lucky) to cultivate it like a garden: patience, forgiveness, a wicked sense of humour and the kind of wisdom that comes from surviving your own mistakes.
The more time we spend filling, tightening, filtering and lifting the outside, the less we have to tend what’s inside. Celebrating the external effects of old age shouldn’t be tokenistic; it should be a genuine movement that honours our full humanity.
Especially in an age where we can generate the perfect face in a single prompt or injection. Choosing to let time show on our faces might be the most defiant act of all, and that’s why I love my 80-year-old self. She’s been granted the luxury of time. She’s earned every age spot, wrinkle and strong opinion on how to make the perfect cuppa. I hope I meet her one day.
Cherie Gilmour is a freelance writer.
