An Opinion Piece on Wrinkles
I have a skincare regimen about eight bottles deep and it burns a $900 hole in my pocket every year. A small drop in the bucket compared to the $3.8 billion the entire US spent on anti-wrinkle creams last year. Why do I, like so many other women, spend so much money erasing wrinkles from my face and slowing the inevitable new ones from forming before I’m ready for them?
Because it’s human nature to loathe lines and wrinkles. Smooth, unblemished skin is the most obvious sign of youth we have, and we exalt youth. Youth means energy, vitality, and time. Wrinkles remind us of our own mortality and how little precious time we have left. Each new wrinkle can feel like a new road taken on the map driving us closer to death.
And in the professional world, wrinkles can show your hand in regard to your age. You run the risk of tipping the scale past “experienced” and into “old and outdated hardware,” since 78% of people aged 40-65 have either seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace.
Even a 2023 study found that faces with wrinkles were judged as less attractive and even less trustworthy and less pleasant when compared to younger, smoother faces.
So it makes sense that when our clients have their professional headshots taken in our Chicago Headshot studio they ask for the softest lighting and the most aggressive retouching possible to destroy their wrinkles.
After 20 years and photographing thousands of faces as a professional portrait photographer, I have mixed feelings about wrinkles. On the one hand I see the unique beauty of every human being and celebrate every beautiful photo that shows every perfect blemish, sun spot, line, and wrinkle. On the other hand, when I see wrinkles on my own face I wince and cower and cringe and vow to buy the even more expensive bottle of wrinkle cream next time.
A woman in her 60’s was in my studio recently, and she mentioned that there was a whole period of her life from about age 30 to age 55 that she avoided having her photo taken. She hid from the photographer at weddings and stood off to the side at parties when someone whipped out a camera. Having her headshot taken with me was going to be the only photo she would have of herself since she was in her late 20’s.
The women in my family were like that too: I have very few photos of my mother and my grandaunt after they both decided they had “aged out” of being photographed. When my grandaunt was in her 90’s and we all begged for a photo she never relented: she preferred the black and white snapshots of herself from the 1930’s as a teenager, and froze herself in time.
I’ve decided to continue photographing myself as I age so that my son has photos of me throughout my entire lifetime, and not just the curated ones from before he was born. In fact, he and I just finished our annual mother-son photo (or our “annual Calvin Klein ad” as I call it) for the walls of my house, so we can watch both of ourselves grow. We started when he was two months old, and then one year, two years, three years, and now four years old. It’s my small act of rebellion in a society that has taught me and women like me to hide from the lens after it doesn’t love you as much anymore.
The beauty industry, which still writes the rules, is slowly moving in the right direction when it comes to embracing the beauty of women north of 30. Helena Christensen is still a working model at age 57. Iris Apfel signed her first modeling contract at age 97, Carmen Dell’Orefice is the oldest working supermodel at 94. But it feels like lip service because Helena Christensen is only still a supermodel because she looks younger than 57 in her photos, and Alicia Johnson, a 62 year old professional model signed with Ford Models, almost never gets booked on any actual campaigns. Brands still prefer the rail-thin teenagers and 20-something smooth-faced babies.
The body positivity movement unfortunately still lags behind human nature, and research proves that.
But the only way out of something is through it. Take that photo. Keep it. Show it off. Embrace your wrinkles as part of your face and not just some old person’s mask that got glued onto your young face. Because in all honesty, smooth faces aren’t the only thing that signifies beauty. Confidence, change, power, and grace signify beauty too. That’s what I see when I see wrinkles on my clients’ faces.
And with a little practice, it’s what I’m starting to see on my own face as well.