Feb 28, 2020 3 min read

The Facebook algorithms know I’m 60 now, and that I wear makeup. They’re smart, but not smart enough to know that I don’t wear false eyelashes, contouring or eyeshadow. The algorithms keep sending me ads for these things, apparently unaware that I’m not buying the products.

Also what I’m not buying: that the “aging” models selling the products are just like the rest of us.

Finally, the definition of “beautiful” is expanding to include all ages, sizes, ethnicities and hair types. Cosmetics companies are selling products that claim to be just what mature women need to look their best. Their social media ads feature models who are presented as being in their 60s, and I do believe that part of the sales pitch. These women shown applying foundation or eyebrow fluff do look like they are in their 60s.

But they don’t look like any 60-somethings I know or have ever met. The models tend to adhere to the same look: long, smooth gray hair, some wrinkles around the eyes but no frown lines or sagging, and naturally full eyebrows. And they are slender – in the way yoga instructors from southern California are slender.

My own version of 60 does not align with that. My gray hair is not the “right” gray, I have both wrinkles and sagging, and my eyebrows were never very full. Despite all the yapping to the contrary, the media world is telling me some people might find me beautiful, but it’s not the right kind of beautiful.

Many of my friends and relatives are in this age group. All are well-groomed and attractive. Some of the cutest women I know are coming up on age 60; any one of them could model for these cosmetics companies. But the companies have a narrowly defined look in mind when they say all of us aging women are beautiful. It’s just more of the same hypocrisy.

Take Christie Brinkley, for example. You’ll often find her pitching some product or other, and yes, she’s spectacularly young looking at age 66. If I were to buy her face cream or her workout gear, might I get anywhere near as good looking as she is? Not in 60 more years. As a friend said, Christie Brinkley started out life 99% more attractive than the rest of us. She has arrived at older age, still at the very far end of the bell curve.

More typically beautiful, mature women do get their time in front of the camera, but not being paid to model products. They are selected for television makeovers, the land of the before and after. Is there anything so condescending as plucking someone’s grandmother out of an audience with the promise of “improving” her? Show me an ad of that woman demonstrating under-eye concealer while presenting her as beautiful, and you might win a customer.

Until then, I kill off these Facebook ads as they pop up, marking them irrelevant or repetitive. A better word would be “offensive.”

I have hope that my daughter and the 20-something daughters of my friends are coming of age free of the narrow (and incorrect) societal definitions of beauty. Sadly, we moms have too much of those messages ingrained in us, and they’ll be hard to shake off.

Yes, the ads are telling us that 60 and 70 and 80 are beautiful. Now it’s time to back up those platitudes with media images that reflect the way 60 looks, out here in the real world where it matters.