Anti Aging Products Target Baby Boomers

Much of what is discussed about anti aging surrounds the development and marketing of anti aging products and services to baby boomers. There is a realization that as we age, we want to continue feeling and looking like we’re not quite as old as we really are. In fact, it could be said that the anti aging focus reflects some deep need to imitate youth, and marketers are riding this notion all the way to the bank.

It would seem that anti aging in America takes on two rather different meanings. On the one hand, anti aging refers to the monumental efforts to tap a huge and growing market for products promising to melt years, even decades, from one’s visage. Others shout that their anti aging nostrums will add decades to your life span.

On the other hand, anti aging can easily refer to the myths that continue to abound in America that older people are basically senile, washed up and unable to contribute much of value to society and the economy. This mindset is fostered in a pop culture that appears to venerate the young. Youth obsession in America reflects a distortion of reality that has profound consequences.

Anti aging really amounts to a denial of fundamental truths. Among them is the fact that the spectre of a swelling older population is beginning to sink into unprepared medical, business, government, and private organizations, both large and small. Of all places, age discrimination in law firms is beginning to affect senior partners.

What’s missing is wisdom and leadership which is sorely missing from political debates which stress wars in the middle east, abortion and the politics of personal destruction. In a youth obsesses culture, mandatory adjustments to accomodating the coming explosion of an aging population do not come up in the discourse. In short, anti aging, just means ignoring aging.