Lethal Injections?

There is a YouTube channel I occasionally like to watch called The Financial Diet.  It's a channel that gives real world financial advice for young people that doesn't include finger-wagging (she won't tell you to stop buying lattes and avocado toast) and also understands the realities of the state of the US economy and the world.  It's host, Chelsea Fagan, is quite a bit younger than I am, and her channel is geared toward a younger crowd, but I guess I like her because she confirms some of my own biases, or at least makes me feel less bad about some of my own financial missteps. She never finished college and went through a time in her life where she mismanaged her money, but she pulled herself out of her hole with research and hard work (but she will acknowledge the privileges that helped her get to where she is) and seems quite successful now.

One day she covered the topic of the hype in the skincare industry.  What should we spend our money on and what shouldn't we?  She invited her dermatologist on to the show to discuss skin issues and how to deal with them.

Fagan talks about her own struggles with acne and the fact that she will likely have to spend money on treatments for it for the rest of her life. What shocked me is she also says she uses Botox. Why would a woman who hasn't even turned forty yet need Botox? Fagan looks youthful enough. 

I suppose she looks youthful because of the Botox. There was a time when I found people who used Botox looked creepy and obvious.  There was something scary about too-smooth foreheads that never moved with expressions. Now I don't notice it nearly as much.  I realized Botox has become so common, even in younger women, that I don't see it the way I used to.  The frozen face look is no longer unusual. 

What stunned me the most was the advice the dermatologist gave to all young women.  She said women start to see the first signs of aging in their twenties and they should start a Botox regimen once those initial hints of lines come in.  What's even more horrifying is she said women can afford it if they give up the avocado toast (yup, she went there). I don't know what infuriated me more, the idea that even young women should pursue youth at all costs, or the tone-deaf idea that young women can't afford a better beauty regimen because they are already recklessly spending. That felt like one of those "Okay Boomer" moments. 

Like it or not, stuffing one's face with chemicals is the new normal.  Skincare used to be about washing your face and throwing some creams on. Beauty was about putting on makeup.  Now it's about going to a dermatologist regularly for line-erasing injections.  It's not enough to merely look good for your age.  You have to erase any signs of living from your face as a normal part of your routine. One upon a time injections and surgery were something rich women did when they hit middle age.  Now women of all ages and socioeconomic classes get their injections as part of their self care like getting haircuts or seeing the dentist. Thanks to Instagram, women are expected to have the "Instagram Face". 

I see a specific danger in this, but it's not the danger you might suspect. Readers might expect me to rail against the tightening of beauty standards or the class bias involved because I always rant about those topics. I'm sure they would even assume I will worry about the potential dangers of accumulated chemicals being injected into the skin over the long term.  My fears are much simpler than that.

In order to explain my biggest fear, I'll go back in time.

There were three things about the and about skin that were impressed on me from an early age.  

1. Too much sun caused skin cancer

2. The sun caused wrinkles and lack of skin elasticity

3. Our society is not kind to older women and women are expected to look young for as long as they can

Young people don't realize this, and people my age forget it, but we all knew about skin cancer and photoaging back in the 70s and 80s. However, GenXers were no different from any other young people and considered themselves immortal, so they deliberately sought a tan even though they knew better. The temporary vanity of a tan was too appealing to worry about what it would do to our skin in the future. Nobody likes to admit to being stupid or careless, so now we look back on our youth and pretend we didn't know better. We did.

I was raised to be cautious about everything, so I paid more attention to the warnings than most of my peers. I began wearing a daily sunscreen (even if it was only the one in my moisturizer) before I was out of my teens. I have never been in a tanning booth. I haven't deliberately tanned by lying out (yes, that is the grammatically correct way to say it) in the sun for hours since I was in high school.  

I admit I'm not perfect and I never was.  I have had a few careless burns in my day.  Even now I will come back from vacations that involve swimming and watersports with a tan.  I usually have a bit of a tan by summer's end from all the swimming I do over the course of an entire summer in addition to my annual beach vacation. I can only say I don't work to achieve it and it fades quickly.  When I'm outside for long periods of time, I always wear sunscreen and hats. So far I am cancer free and people often tell me I look good for my age (although I don't look as good as people who do a better job of avoiding the sun than I do, and people rarely ever mistake me for younger than I am anymore). I couldn't understand why other people weren't worried about the long-term effects of tanning.  It seemed to me a dark tan was a temporary vanity that would only make one look worse in the long term and could potentially kill you.

I will be the first to admit, vanity has motivated me over the years more than cancer. My daily sunscreen is more about my insurance against aging poorly than it is about cancer.  It's not that I don't worry about skin cancer, but I am human with human faults. I want to look as good as I can for as long as I can.  I never understood why others didn't feel the same way.

In the past when I would say something to some tanorexic friend or acquaintance, the response was usually something along the lines of, "I have great genetics.  My parents and grandparents don't have wrinkles, so I won't either." (I’m sure in her youth your grandmother didn't lie on a beach in a bikini for hours or cook herself in a tanning booth until her skin turned the color of a baseball glove, so maybe there is a reason she has no wrinkles, but believe what you want.) There was always a denial the cosmetic affects of tanning could happen to them. They used the same excuse of genetics to say they would never have cancer. Skin cancer (unlike, say, breast cancer) has no proven genetic link, but if nobody in your family ever had it, you won’t either, according to my leathery friends.

These days if I caution someone against too much tanning for fear of premature aging the response is more along the lines of, "There is always Botox and surgery." 

People don't worry about tanning anymore because it's acceptable now - and even expected - to simply inject away the effects of the sun. 

I think that's rather dangerous.  Photoaging used to be one way to create a fear of tanning.  We are forgetting that other reason why we shouldn't tan. You can treat the cosmetic side effects of the sun, but it's not as easy to treat the other effects.  

Humans always deny bad things won't happen to them.  We're bad at taking advice and heeding warnings.  We put on the air conditioner and drive SUVs as the planet heats up more every year.  We stuff our bodies with questionable food and ignore the fact that our clothes grow tighter until the diabetes strip comes up positive. No testimonial by someone talking through a stoma, losing all her fingers and teeth, being permanently hooked up to an oxygen tank, or simply dropping dead stops some people from smoking.  We often believe we can get behind the wheel after we had that last drink.  (All we need to do is find out where the police sobriety checkpoints are.)  

That's because individual humans like to believe they are the exception to the rule.  Diabetes, obesity, lung cancer, and drunk driving accidents only happen to other people.  Skin cancer only happens to blondes, or people with bad genetics, or people who use tanning booths, or people who don't tan consistently enough.  In any case, it won't happen to you.

Now that we all believe there are cosmetic procedures that can undo the aging effects of the sun, there is no reason to protect ourselves anymore.  Tanning is all about vanity.  The number one reason not to tan is vanity.  We forget there is a better reason not to tan that has to do with our health and potentially our lives.  

So this makes me wonder.  Now that cosmetic procedures have become less expensive, more commonplace, and even more "required" as part of a beauty regimen, will we forget to avoid the main culprit of skin aging?  If we ignore it, will there be more dire consequences?  Are we going to see an increase in skin cancer cases - and even death - as more humans walk around with their wrinkles stuffed full of chemicals? 

Given how doomed the planet seems these days, perhaps none of us will live long enough to know.