Turn Back Time?

Chuck discusses the challenges of aging gracefully.

By Chuck Nice

This week our Cinematherapy movie was Death Becomes Her starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. I watched the film with a gnawing discomfort, the source of which I couldn't quite identify. The movie is about two aging Hollywood starlets who despise one another and harbor mutual feelings of schadenfreude.  The two women are obsessed with staying young, motivated not only by vanity but also by their bitter rivalry and the need to out shine one another. Their lives are seemingly a continual preparation for a thirty year class reunion that never comes. Without each others knowledge, they both purchase a potion from a sorceress (played by Isabella Rossellini) that offers them eternal life. The only problem is that they actually become the living dead, kind of like really attractive zombies. By the way, one of the reasons I like this movie is because it's nothing more than a sexy zombie flick. In the end, as with all deals made with the devil, they would have been better off growing old gracefully. I won't spoil the end with details but it cracked me up (very bad pun).

So what about this film made me uncomfortable? Well in a way, I'm just like these women. No, I'm not a sexy zombie, unless you count my hang over days and there's nothing sexy about that. I'm not a person who believes in grudges and the only rivalry I have is with me; but I am increasingly aware of my age. I hate to admit it but I'm afraid of looking older. I go to the gym, I try and eat properly, and I use certain age defying skincare products, not to be healthy but to stave off the effects of time - for the love of cheese I bought an eye cream last week! I identify with these women because I work in television and the industry is skewed more and more towards the young. Due to advertiser demand, most TV programming is skewed towards teenagers, which is difficult for me to understand: They're moody, mercurial and they have no true sense of self. But when I look at audition breakdowns more and more job postings call for a hip, young host for something or other. The irony is that if you're requesting someone young and hip, you are probably old and crusty. The entertainment industry is the only field where age discrimination is not only permissible it's encouraged. That's why you find so many celebrities that look less real than their counterparts at Madam Tussauds. The pressure to look young starts to bear down on you like a weight; so in turn you find yourself lifting weights, and being concerned with terms like free radicals and collagen builders and fine line reducers. I was performing at a college where I told my age on stage and I heard a collective moan go up from the girls in the audience. It was almost as if they were saying, "Why aren't you doing this show from a coffin? I can't date you, you decrepit son of corpse". That's because to a 19 year old girl I am old. Not that I would ever date a 19 year old -- the only thing she could do for me is introduce me to her mother.

As a man, I'm slightly embarrassed to reveal my true feelings about getting older. We're not supposed to care, that's theoretically something that concerns women. Well that's bull chips! We just deal with it differently. We go out and buy a convertible, or a motorcycle, or we start wearing clothes that make us look like we just got kicked out of some awful boy band, or we leave our wife and start dating one of our daughter's friends. I, for one, don't want to go out like that, but I'm not sure if I know how to grow old gracefully either.

In the meantime, could someone please recommend a good eye cream?