January 25, 2016 • 58 mins
From bathing in donkey's milk to injecting our faces with fat and neurotoxins, our wrinkle-fighting regimens have been evolving for millennia. But are those lines really worth the battle? Cristen and Caroline iron out the history of our anti-wrinkle efforts, what bad habits accelerate aging and how wrinkles affect our self-perception.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Um. I was contemplating my forehead
wrinkles this morning as we were preparing to come into
the studio to record this episode, because they are intense.
(00:26):
I'm wearing bangs today, so Kristen's just looking at my
bangs right now. I was about to say I can't
comment because I mean, your bangs look great, thank you,
thank you. I'm getting them trimmed tomorrow actually, because I'm
starting to not be able to see. But they hide
a dark secret, and that is that I have intense
forehead wrinkles. And part of this issue is that I
(00:49):
tend to make faces, and I tend not to know
how um strong and apparent my facial expressions are until
I'm in a meeting and people are like, oh, why
don't you tell it's what you think, because I've clearly
made a face that's like, oh, this is insane. Uh yeah.
And so in the course of this research, I've discovered
(01:10):
that repetitive facial expressions can contribute to wrinkles. And there's
all sorts of factors in terms of what gives you
wrinkles when you get them, how bad and severe they're
going to be. Um, I don't I don't say bad
because some people might love their wrinkles. I am not
a fan of my forehead wrinkles. I have considered botox, Kristen.
(01:31):
But here's the thing. I love moving my eyebrows too much. Yeah,
the source of my power lies in my eyebrow expressions. Well,
and you can just keep rocking bangs? Yeah, why why
botox when you can bang? Can that that's going to
be our new or new thing? There we go? Well,
(01:52):
thanks or no, thanks to this research. I've had a
little trouble getting to sleep the past couple of days
because some of the articles that we read, we're talking
about how sleeping on your stomach and sleeping with your
face directly against your sheets, unless they're silk sheets, can
(02:13):
also lead to wrinkles because you stay in that position
all night. And I am a stomach sleeper to the max.
And in fact, I got up in the middle of
the night and when I got back into bed, it
was the first thing that I thought of as I
rolled over to get on my stomach in my like
(02:33):
weird burrito pillow over my head position that I prefer.
And it took me a little extra time to put
podcasts research out of my brain, and that is a hazard. Yeah,
it is, Well, you know, hearing about our wrinkle worries,
it's it's nothing new. We we've heard our mothers and
(02:53):
our grandmother's stress about their wrinkles. Well, I don't know,
maybe you haven't, I have, um, but this is some
thing that people have worried about and struggled with forever.
And this is gonna be one of those sminty episodes
where we do take it back to ancient Egypt and
ancient Greece and then we get to talk about the
Victorians too. But in response to that one listener who
(03:15):
months ago was teasing us about jumping from ancient Egypt
to the Victorians all the time, which we do because
those are our favorite people. There, there is a little
bit of stuff in between. Yeah, and really quickly, I
want to know that, Uh, I don't know that I
so much worry about my wrinkles as I worry about
worrying about my wrinkles, because I don't want to worry
(03:36):
about my wrinkles, Caroline. I don't want to care. I
want to accept my crow's feet and laugh lines and
not buy into all the marketing that we're going to
talk about in the second half of the podcast. Um,
but one thing that is unabashedly delightful and all of
this are the lengths that we have gone to, especially
(03:59):
we wim men, have gone to to avoid and erase
wrinkles throughout time, oh forever. And I mean it's it's wrinkles,
it's aging. I mean, it's that fear of getting old
and dying. But it's more than that, it's the fear
of just appearing to get older. Yeah, I mean, it's
the whole longstanding patriarchal cultural issue of women being valued
(04:24):
for youth and fertility and youthful beauty especially well, so
let's dive into this timeline. A lot of it's coming
from both Marie Claire and into the Gloss, in addition
to a couple other sources. But let's travel back to
ancient Egypt. There were a lot of women who underwent
this super time intensive process to create oil out of
(04:47):
fine you Greek, which then they'd rub all over themselves
to try to keep themselves moisturized and glistening and wrinkle free,
and Cleopatra allegedly bathed in the milk of hundreds of
donkeys because I guess when you're Cleopatra you can do that.
You can have people go milks and donkeys. Yeah, I'm
sure she smelled great, um, but you know she was
onto something because people the alpha hydroxy acids in milk
(05:11):
do actually have skin softening and potentially anti aging properties.
Like when you read about you know, there's so many
wrinkle treatments out there that don't work. They they're basically
snake oil. Alpha hydroxy acids are mentioned over and over
again is something that actually can help you fight physical
signs of aging. Now you say it's snake oil, but
if it's a Greek oil, then might it work. Possibly
(05:35):
if there we go, well, then if we jump to
the Greeks and Romans, they would mix mud and crocodile poop,
proving that you will do anything to fix your wrinkles
sometimes and in the Tang dynasty era in China, Empress
Wuzeschian created fairy powder so called fairy powder out of
(05:55):
mother Wart, which is an urban the mint family that's
also been you to treat and prevent uterine infections, so
it's multi purpose. Now, the next person we're going to
talk about probably has the most intensive supposed uh skin
regimen that I've ever heard of. Yeah. Uh. Sixteenth century
(06:20):
Hungarian countess and serial killer Elizabeth Bathory Douix said supposedly
coded herself in the blood of hundreds of virgins. And
I say coded herself, not bathed in, because in the
comments under one of these articles talking about historical wrinkle treatments,
somebody was like, hello, in the time it would take
(06:44):
to bleed out hundreds of virgins, the blood would have
like clumped up and coagulated, and I'm like, oh my god,
this is gross. So I think the more accurate phrase
would be to say that she coded herself in blood.
But I mean, this is a thing like Kim Kardashian
posted a photo of freaking social media getting a vampire
(07:05):
facial where they like, use your own blood and something
to like coat your face to use anti aging properties. Supposedly,
I'm horrified. Well, I super appreciate Mary, Queen of Scott's
bathing in white wine, which was said to improve complexion
and have antiseptic properties. And you know, if you want
(07:28):
to just relax, take a little sip of your bath
and there you go. Turn on some real housewives. Get
a real long crazy straw as you're sitting in the
tub human soup. Um. Well, Empress CC of Austria used
a cream that was a mix of spermacetti which n
b D. It's just the oil and the whale's head
(07:49):
U sweet almond oil and rose water on her face.
Where would she get the oil from a whale's head.
I'm sure her pet whale. Yeah, I mean, I guess
when you're an empress again, kind of like Leopatra and
her monkeys, right exactly. But don't worry, um, if you're
not into sper massetti and killing whales, you can just
(08:09):
use a mix like CC did of raw veal and
strawberries underneath the leather mast which sounds like she just puts,
which just sounds like a fancy cevich a, and then
get some tortilla chips. If you get your white wine
bath and your cevich a mask and cortina chips, I'll
(08:30):
tell you what you got it. You got yourself an afternoon.
I'm laughing, but I do honestly think it is fascinating
what people have done and still do in an effort
to retain a youthful appearance. And this leads us into
my favorite people, the Victorians. One of their tricks of
(08:54):
the trade was to use mercury to get rid of
wrinkles and blemishes. And it works. Is it destroys your skin,
It like peels it off and then it kills you.
So good job Victorians. Maybe they were like, well, at
least we'll go before you know. A lot of wrinkles
set in well, young um in the late eighteen hundreds, though,
(09:17):
the syringe is invented, and once we got the syringe,
we started deciding to try to fill the wrinkles on
our face with stuff such as paraffin ad idea. Yeah,
this is when we get the first chemicals being used
for face augmentation. Allah old school botox and paraffin was
the first one they used. And a German doctor was
(09:38):
the first person to take someone's own fat and injected
into their face to quote unquote correct quote unquote defects. Yeah.
So yeah, early on medicine getting involved in the beauty market.
I just love that people were like, oh, we bet
a syringe, like, let's go wild with it. Well, we
(10:01):
can't forget Madam Rawley's toilet mask or face glove, which
horrifyingly much like CC's leather mask, you would strap to
your face and then sleep in. And according to the
advertisement that we looked at uh famous society ladies, actresses, bells,
(10:22):
et cetera. Use it. That's a quote, Bells, et cetera.
Are we the etcetera? Yeah, we're the we're podcasters. And
they also said, in order to convince you it is
recommended by imminent physicians and scientific men. Well, if men say,
it's okay, scientific men, Kristen. But I think my favorite
product out of all of these was developed in nine
(10:45):
by stage mom Margaret Crayson, who discovered that her daughter Alice,
who was a concert pianist, had developed frown lines from
staring at her sheet music, or at least so she
thought so. She developed in cardboard triangles that could be
glued over wrinkle prone areas overnight to smooth out those
(11:07):
creases and prevent your facial muscles from scrunching while you slept,
because I guess you grimace in your dreams. And they
were called frownies. Yeah I need these, and they still
make them. Frownies are on the market in and I
need them because here's the thing my mother and I
share are really unfortunate trait, and that as we frown
(11:29):
in our sleep. How do you know this? I just
told you. Okay, okay, So Exhibit A. When I was
home for Christmas, my mom has a tendency to fall
asleep in her chair. So I'm like on my laptop
and I look up and my mother is asleep, but
she's got her face all scrunched up, and she's like,
(11:50):
she's got a deep frown going on in the line
between the eyes her knit brow. Um. I fell asleep
in eighth grade Civics cloud us one time, leaning up
against the wall, and a friend of mine woke me
up and was like, are you upset? What's And I
was like, I'm asleep, what's going on? Sorry? My teacher
(12:11):
in eighth grade? Uh, And she was like, look, you're
like frowning. You look so pissed. That's Exhibit B. Exhibit
See the other morning, when I was contemplating my forehead wrinkles,
I was also also contemplating the lines between my eyebrows,
because I clearly like, I'm really concerned about things in
my sleep. Oh yeah, I have a huge furrow between
(12:32):
my between my eyebrows. I just it adds character. We're
working out problems in her sleep, that's fine. No, mine
is definitely from during my wakeful hours. Uh, either nervously
knitting my brows or scowling. Um. But Caroline, I really
hope that you have Amazon primed yourself some frownies. I will,
(12:53):
I need to. It'll be great. And then, oh my god,
we could think of all of the social media fun
we can have. Sorry, I'm just getting off track, or
even big frowning. Why now and then? But another resource
that I think would be helpful for us and our
listeners to pick up would be the Ladies Dressing Room
and eight book by Baroness Staff, which has a lot
(13:16):
of advice that sounds remarkably like stuff you'd see on
today's beauty blogs. It's it's everything, it's it's everything about
your appearance that you could possibly think of. But there
is a specific wrinkle section with lots of advice to
watch those facial expressions Ladies. She writes, there would be
fewer wrinkles if people would correct themselves of certain bad habits.
(13:38):
She lists repeated frowning, lifting the eyebrows at every movement
for nothing at all, stereotyped artificial smiles, and watch out
readers sitting up late at night reading novels is infallible
for drawing that terrible network of crow's feet around the eyes,
(13:59):
which disfigure was the prettiest face. Well, you know what,
Baroness staff, you know what I have to say to her.
She's also racist because in her beauty advice she also
talked about how white skin is the only attractive skin
out there. There were problems there, there were some issues.
Eight three was not the most progressive time for white
(14:20):
Baroness is out there. Um, But her flagrant racism aside.
She did have some tips for washing your face. Apparently
I've been washing my face all wrong because I just, like,
you know, do it all at once and swished my
hands all around my face, which I think I have
(14:40):
a problem now that I say it out loud. Um.
She suggests washing your face from the bottom up and
wash your eyes from the temple to the nose, and
then just missed with water. Yeah, if you're in a
dry environment, missed your face with water for an extended
period of time, Like some of the millionaires in New
(15:01):
York whose skins suffer from overheated rooms. Okay, but this
also reminds me of those beauty sections in women's magazines
that they offer like beauty regimens for celebrities and women
who travel all the time. And I forget which celebrity
it was, but she was talking about how her trick
(15:22):
when she is on a plane is to miss her
face because of the recycled dry air and the plane.
I see that all the time in those women's magazines,
and I mean they still sell all types of face
missing water in stores. Uh. You should also try sacrifices,
according to Lady Staff, be like the one lady that
(15:43):
she talks about, and you just stay in bed all
day until you feel better and your creases have relaxed.
I love that rather than frowning, if something is getting
you down, don't frown, get in bed until it goes away.
But she does allow a few laugh induced Yes, is
because she says it's better to have one wrinkle more
(16:03):
and acquire a good quality than a smooth forehead and
the faults of a child. That being said, she urges
a little rest for the face four or five times
a day, no big deal. By shutting the eyes and
remaining perfectly still for one, two or five minutes when
it can be done without neglecting anything important and listeners.
(16:24):
This is uh has been a little awkward a couple
of times when I look over at the standing decks
next to me and Caroline is standing with her eyes
closed stock still. Well, I know because I fail at
it every time because as soon as I close my
eyes I started to frown. So it's you know, there's
no winning. Well, then when she gets your frownies, I
know then it'll be off that We could also take
(16:46):
a tip from the nineteen tens through the thirties when
radioactive masks, straps, patches, and cosmetics were all the race. Oh,
this is such a fascinating period when people went lady
gaga over radioactive stuff, including chin straps. Tell me about
these radio or chin straps please, yeah, So, okay, you
(17:09):
have to keep in mind the context of the time.
So Murray and Pierre Curry had done all this stuff
with radioactive materials that you know, the world was amazed
by these advancements in science. And so you get the
radio or chin straps, which you would you know, strapped
your face and they supposedly provided a continuous, steady current
of energy flowing into the skin, and before long, the
(17:32):
wrinkles have disappeared, the nerves have become strong and energized,
and the tired muscles have become braced up and ready
for service. What service? I haven't the slightest idea. You
also had chemo lite radioactive beauty plasma, which was supposedly
volcanic mud from the Carpathian Mountains that was to be
(17:52):
used as the daily cream. Wow, yeah, I mean that
that doesn't sound too far away from the mud and
crocodile poop of the ancient Romans and Greeks, right right.
And then there was so Radia, which contained thorium chloride
and radium bromide, which are both horrifyingly radioactive ingredients ps.
(18:16):
And then as we continue our timeline, we see in
the nineteen forties that injectable silicone becomes a thing for
the first time. In the seventies and eighties, injectable bovine
collagen is developed and people are once again injecting their
own fat into their faces. In between two thousand and
two thousand, twelve, botox treatments rose six hundred eighty per cent. Yeah,
(18:43):
there was some initial like battitudes about botox, you know,
being a neurotoxin, and so people weren't so into it.
But they've gotten over those, uh, those quibbles for sure,
and now botox is super common. It's even used in
your armpits if you have hyper hydro this there we go. Yeah,
it's people use it to help ease migraines. I mean,
(19:05):
they use it for everything, and it can even do
your laundry. Just just keep a jar of botox around. Well,
we've now arrived at our anti aging, anti wrinkle industry today,
and we've got lots to talk about, including how wrinkles
are actually formed scientifically, and we'll talk about that when
(19:27):
we come right back from a quick break. You know,
I feel like when I first attended to make a website,
things would have been easier if I'd had square Space
at my disposal instead of just putting pictures of Corgis everywhere,
which you know, I eventually did take it down. So
maybe now is the time to use square space to
(19:48):
build my personal website, corgy space dot com, right, Caroline, Yeah,
exactly what else would it be? The great thing about
square Space is that their sites look professionally designed regardless
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So you can start your free trial site today at
(20:10):
square space dot com. And when stuff mom never told
you listeners decided to sign up for squarespace, be sure
to use the offer code mom stuff to get ten
percent off your first purchase Squarespace. You should. So it
(20:34):
should come as no surprise to anyone listening that today's
anti aging business is booming at the plan words because
it's mostly thanks to the baby boomer generation. According to
Transparency Market Research in August, they predicted by twenty nineteen,
the anti aging market will be worth a hundred and
(20:54):
nine point seven billion dollars and for a little active
they valued it at a hundred and twenty two point
three billion dollars. In Granted, you will see different valuations
depending on what you include in the beauty and anti
aging market. If you're including just like creams and lisens
(21:17):
and potions, if you're including dermatological services and things like that. Um,
but that should just give you a little tip as
to how booming this business is. And a lot of that,
like you said, is thanks to the boomer generation, people
born between ninety six and nineteen sixty four are the
biggest consumers of anti aging products and services. But people
(21:40):
our age are all about this newer uh industry of
projuvenation treatments. Yeah. So, like you know, I've seen in
plenty of magazines that women in their early twenties should
start using anti aging products. And really, I think the
key is just to use sunscreen like our mothers did.
Tell us that that is like super key and and
(22:03):
um slowing down the aging process. But also I knew
a girl at my last job who in her early
twenties started getting botox in her forehead because she was like, well,
this is how you prevent wrinkles. You just keep the
muscles from moving. Oh, listen for a little bit of
sad news today. Before we came into the podcast, Studio
news broke that a beauty queen in Brazil named Raquel Santos,
(22:27):
who's twenty eight years old, die undergoing a wrinkle surgery.
It was called a Chinese mustache and it is supposed
to remove the wrinkles like around your your mouth years old.
Oh my god, I've never heard of that procedure, and
that's so tragic and apparently mean. She'd apparently undergone lots
(22:48):
of you know, plastic surgery and procedures like that. But listen, yeah,
I mean that it's not worth it. Nope, yikes, um,
But it is interesting to see I did not reel
eyes that this market, the anti aging market, is actually booming.
The biggest in the United States. It's huge in North America, Europe,
(23:08):
and the Asia Pacific region, but super big among American women,
who lead the way in those anti aging facial skincare
products when compared to women in Germany, France, in the UK.
So we know that we've spent a ton of time
throughout history worrying about wrinkles, and we spent a ton
of money today worrying about wrinkles. But what causes them? Anatomically?
(23:34):
What is going on? Because I mean probably every single
listener has heard the connection to the sun. I mean,
you're likeliest to form wrinkles on your face, neck, hands,
and arms because those are the most exposed to the sun.
But what's going on to to make our wrinkles? Well,
we looked at this interesting bit of research coming out
(23:56):
of Brown University that was looking at this theoretical model
of our wrinkles form in a bunch of different materials.
They weren't necessarily writing about human skin, but they were
arguing that their same logic could possibly hold true for skin.
So basically, when something wrinkles, you have a stiff surface,
which is called the stiffness boundary layer with softer sub layers.
(24:19):
But when you compress it, it begins to buckle and
form patterns on the surface. And as that compression increases,
groups of ripples then become a single crease where the
surface dips down to the sub layers. Is it just
making me think of ruffles potato chips? Well, but at
least those are salty and delicious, I know, potato chips. Well,
(24:41):
so you mentioned the sun, Kristen, what else can cause
those wrinkles as pesky wrinkles? Well, first of all, we've
got our jeans, I mean before we even get into
the sun, obviously when we're given jeans in the womb,
and your genes determine your skin structure and texture. But
(25:01):
the biggest wrinkle maker really is the sun because of
that U V exposure and that accelerates aging and is
the primary cause of early on set wrinkles because those
UV raised break down our skins connective fibers, collagen, and elastin,
which means that our skin loses strength and flexibility, which
(25:25):
leads to that premature sagging and wrinkling. Man, I'm telling
you go get some self tanner cream. Like, as much
as I love being in the sun, I am I,
it's just so bad for you. It's so bad for
your skin and your body, and just don't do it.
And of course age obviously ages a factor. As you age,
(25:47):
your skin becomes less elastic and more fragile. It also
produces less oil, which makes it appear more wrinkled. You
have your deeper down fat diminishing, which contributes to saggy
or skin and therefore more pronounced wrinkles. And for anyone
who's ever flipped through a woman's magazine probably knows, diet
contributes to it as well. You have sugary and starchy
(26:11):
foods that promote inflammation and accelerate aging because they're associated
with again that collagen and alassin becoming stiff and less springy.
And the chemicals in foods like say white bread and
my beloved potato chips helped make us even more susceptible
to sun damage. And if you're not getting enough good
(26:34):
fats think avocados, think salmon to keep those skin that
skin looking supple, that could contribute to wrinkles as well.
You need to get all of those good veggies. The
vitamins in them promote collagen and protein. Not getting enough
protein means that you're going to have more cracks and
wrinkles in the skin. And in case you needed more
of a reason, you should also be drinking plenty of water, which,
(26:57):
even though that's not going to be some miracle cure,
all we your skin is nicely moisturized, whether that is
through drinking a ton of water or actually using lotion,
just the appearance of wrinkles will not be as obvious.
And stress is a major culprit as well, because stress
triggers the release of the hormone cortisol, which causes cell damage,
(27:17):
and so that inflammatory response isn't good for our skin either.
And if you're really stressed, you probably aren't getting great sleep,
and that's going to exacerbate the problem as well, because
sleep helps counteract the effects of stress because that's when
our growth hormones are released, right, So human growth hormone
basically works with your collagen to maintain skin and muscle composition.
(27:39):
But as you age, your body's production of collagen slows,
which leads to that looser and thinner skin. And then
there's the basics that we say in almost any health episode,
you need to be getting enough exercise, not drinking excess alcohol,
not smoking. Studies have found that exercisers skin is actually
(28:01):
thicker and has more healthy collagen. Exercises. Also, as you've
probably read, two, an anti inflammatory wonder drug, and for
anyone who has tied one on, you probably know the
next morning your skin is so so so dry. I mean,
in addition to the inflammation response to alcohol triggers and
(28:23):
the broken capillaries and cell damage that it can cause
as our bodies metabolize it, it dehydrates us and leaves
us prone to fine lines, dullness, and enlarged pores. And
I can firsthand tell you the horror of looking at
hangover face skin. It's different in your thirties, that's for sure,
(28:46):
Ever even times in the twenties. Well, also, everybody please
quit smoking today right now, because smoking reduces blood and
nutrient supplies and that alarates aging. Not to mention that
repeated kissy face you're making when you're sucond on a
cigarette is part of the whole Victorians being right about
(29:09):
not making repeated facial expressions. So those repeated facial expressions
end up causing those creases. They get compressed over and
over again. So don't squint. People wear sunglasses where your
moisturizing I cream with peptides. Those are proteins. Don't worry
about it, just google it. Repetitive smiling, although come on, like,
(29:29):
let's let's have our laugh lines. These quote unquote injuries
are what cause fine lines. That repeated use of facial
muscles causes grooves to form beneath the skin, and as
you age, there's less ability to bounce back. And I
really enjoyed us speaking of grooves the description in a
(29:52):
study in the British Journal of Dermatology, which said that
a wrinkle isn't really different from the rest of your skin.
It's just what they call a figuration change quote like
the grooves worn in an old glove. Thanks yeah, thanks,
thanks a lot. But okay, so we we've been talking
(30:13):
about all this stuff about how aging accelerates. What we're
doing to ourselves that could be contributing to the natural
aging and wrinkling process. And beyond just sheer like human vanity,
there are other reasons that maybe we should be concerned
about wrinkles and how we perceive them. Uh. There was
this one study that found that steady participants rated the
(30:34):
faces of older adults as sadder and angrier, even though
their expressions were neutral, basically because their facial wrinkles were
causing the mouth to drop and the forehead to crinkle,
features that other people often perceive as anger or sadness.
So basically all old folks have resting bitch face according well, sad,
(31:01):
resting sad bitch base. Yeah. Yeah. And the implications for this,
I mean, this sounds like, oh, that's too bad, but
their actual implications for this because it could affect, the
study author said, how older adults are treated in medical
settings and in a time when people of a certain
age are maybe losing people in their social and family groups,
(31:24):
if they look negative, angry, and sad, they are less
likely to be considered approachable, so it might be even
harder to form new connections with new people. And this
also echoes previous research which found that whipper snappers like
us have a hard time determining older people's emotions from
(31:46):
their faces because, as they say, wrinkles muddle expression. Yeah,
and so there was, um, there was some reading that
we did where older women were interviewed, and we'll talk
about this in a little bit, but a lot of
them said, you know, I'm just tired of people assuming
that I'm tired and angry all the time, Like I
don't feel that way, but people look at me. It's
(32:06):
like when I fell asleep in eighth grade? Are you
angry about your sleeping? What's going on? He so angry
about civics? No, I'm just I frown and then it
makes a wrinkle. Sorry, but here's a question pertinent to
stuff I've never told you. How do we talked about
age a lot, but what about sex? Do guys and
(32:27):
gals experience wrinkles differently physically and culturally? The answer is
the yeah. Yeah. So there was a Japanese study that
found that in general, men had more severe wrinkles than women.
But but this trend reverses or completely disappears once you
(32:49):
get up into the oldest groups that they surveyed. So
in all of the age groups they looked at men
showed increased forehead wrinkles compared with women. So maybe I'll
have to do some forehead wrinkle comparison with some guys. Um.
But there were no gender dependent differences found in upper
eyelid wrinkles. As my mother would tell you, because she
wants to. She literally talks all the time about how
(33:09):
she wants to go get a couple's eye lift with
my father. Why what does that do? Well, obviously it
lifts your eyes, but it makes you look younger, it
gets rid of the wrinkles and folds over your eyes. Yeah,
she's positively gleeful that her eye doctor told her that
because her upper lid drooped so much, it could be
(33:30):
considered a medically necessary procedure for her vision. It sounds uncomfortable. Oh,
but there was another study I was looking at, So
be careful if you go in for an eyelift, because
they looked at they showed basically ie and facial expressions
to study participants, and before the eye lift, the person
(33:53):
was judged as being you know, angry, negative, tired. But
when they did some computer magic and made the person
look as if she'd had an eye lift, the study
participants again thought she looks angry, negative and unapproachable because
it had been so severe that now the eyebrows were
way up and people were like, she looks like she's
(34:16):
mad at me. So there is that sweet spot. So
if you're planning to make an eyelift appointment, tell your
doctor not to go nuts moral the story, just leave
your face alone or or that. Yeah. I was really
fascinated though, by a study from two thousand nine in
the journal Aesthetic Surgery, which found that women tend to
(34:38):
develop laugh lines more because we have fewer sweat glands
around our mouths compared to men, and having fewer sweat
or sabacious glands mean that we produce less oil, which
protects our skin and keeps it soft. Yeah. We also
have fewer blood vessels, and so that means less blood
(34:58):
flow to the mouth re gen, which is interesting because
it's that blood flow that like keeps you looking all
peppy and unwrinkled. Might be like lessened blood flow to
the mouth region. Like, yeah, that does sound like it
goes back to that Hungarian countess, doesn't it. Um, But
women also have uh muscles around our mouths that are
(35:21):
closer to the skin, which might pull the skin and tighter,
causing more wrinkles and hormones because hormones. Hormones do everything right, Yeah,
I mean, at first, estrogens are helpful. They promote healing,
and that actually means this is pretty cool. Women tend
to heal from wounds faster. But when menopause hits, your
(35:42):
blood flow is reduced again contributing to lines and furrows,
and you have that drop obviously in estrogen going on,
not to mention the decrease in fat or sea bum
secreted by our sweat glands, which of course is compounded
by our lower concentration of sweat glands. Right. Meanwhile, I mean,
(36:02):
women who have done hormone replacement therapy reportedly have fewer
wrinkles than those not taking any hormones at all, which,
so I mean there's another thing to think about. But
the thing that compounds all of this too, especially for women,
is the culture how we perceive and treat women with
(36:24):
visible signs of aging. Yeah, we puilled some interesting information
from Laura heard Clark's book Facing Age, Women, Growing Older
and Anti Aging Culture. Uh So, she talked to a
whole bunch of doctors and plastic surgeons and dermatologists. She
also talked to a large group of aging women, and
one doctor she talked to said that overall, they're seeing
(36:47):
a lot more both men and women coming in earlier,
earlier being ages thirty five to fifty, wanting more subtle
results through non surgical interventions, because it used to be
you didn't have such a broad availability of you know,
the botox and the all the different types of fillers
and things like that that you have now. But now
(37:09):
that they're available, we're seeing more younger people, both men
and women, coming in and saying, oh, well, since it's
not a drastic surgery, like I feel more comfortable with it,
so yeah, let's just pump some stuff into these wrinkles. Yeah.
Whenever I go to my dermatologist's office, whenever I'm waiting
in the room, the exam room for her to come in,
(37:29):
I always look at the men's botox brochures because it's
just fascinating to even see that advertisement targeted at older gents.
But still though women do make up the bulk of
the demand for both surgical and non surgical cosmetic procedures,
and the explanations provided by the doctors that Clark talked
to I had a lot to do with stuff that
(37:52):
we talked about on the podcast all the time. The
doctors acknowledged the pervasiveness of media messages about women's attractiveness
and said that this whole like surgical or non surgical
intervention thing might just be an extension of their other
quote beauty work efforts like trying to wear the right
clothes and makeup and hair to be the most flattering
(38:13):
to your age figure, et cetera. But they also acknowledge
that there's just a lot of pressure on women to
look good versus men. One even said, yeah, there's this
attitude that women get old and men just age. Yeah,
I mean it's the whole thing. If we talk about hair,
when our hair turns gray, which mine has started to do,
(38:33):
it is a bit more daunting for women because guys
turned into silver foxes and women just start looking kind
of old. Well, men, I think are more valued for
being like, oh, a distinguished older man who probably has
accumulated more wealth and power, whereas a woman tends to
be valued in her younger years for her beauty and fertility. Fertility. Yeah, yeah,
(39:02):
it all goes back to sex and babies. But it's
not necessarily just to turn back the clock and look young.
More commonly, people have been telling their doctors that they
just want their outsides to match their insides and get
rid of this whole haggard, tired, negative look. And some
doctors even framed it when they spoke with Clark, like,
(39:23):
it's just part of a health regimen with appearance and
psychological benefits, that women who simply want to look natural
and be healthy, and they just want their faces to
reflect that. And that's something that I hear echoed from
my mom increasingly as she's gotten older, her being vocally
insistent with how young and vibrant and healthy she feels,
(39:48):
and that she never wants to look old and it
is and and so that that idea of matching the
inside to the outside definitely resonated. And I can understand that,
especially if there's an assumption other people if you're perceived
to look tired and upset, whereas you're you're just you
and you feel totally fine. Yeah. And so Clark argues
(40:12):
that these sort of casual attitudes about what I just
want to look how I feel have led to increasingly
unattainable appearance demands for women in later life. These are
costly procedures. They are they can be time consuming, and
she had interviewed a whole bunch of women in the
(40:32):
late nineties before Botox super took off, before the mediorc
rise of all of these non surgical interventions, and across
the board a dent unanimously, they all had strong negative opinions,
everything from sadness to shock to dismay about their wrinkles.
They all expressed the desire to eliminate them, and Clark
(40:52):
calls this the internalization of ages, conceptualizations of physical attractiveness. Yeah,
I mean, women looking at themselves in the mirror describe
themselves looking crabby, grouchy, withered, miserable. And the older they were,
the stronger their reactions were because they interpreted their wrinkles
(41:16):
as signs of deterioration and of course a sign that hey,
you know what, at some point you're gonna die. And
culturally too, it goes to the whole thing of like,
not only do aging men become distinguished, but for many
aging women, as we talked about a lot during our
episode on Women of a Certain age, it's a process
of feeling like you are disappearing. Yeah, exactly, so you know,
(41:41):
these women expressed the desire to have their wrinkles disappear.
Can we should? We like? What are what are the
options that are out there that people think actually work well?
You have the injections, which thankfully are no longer limited
to paraffin. You know, have safer things like botox and
(42:04):
restalan and other kinds of fillers. And then, of course
you've got other medical and spat treatments like laser and
light resurfacing, chemical peels, dermibration. I've had dermibration done. It
feels real weird, like a like a robot cat is
licking your face. It's real weird. Have you had it done?
I've had micro demibration. I'm sure it's the same thing. Um.
(42:25):
Of course, there's all the inside out stuff that we
already talked about, eating plenty of healthy fats, fruits, vegetables,
getting all of that good hydration, all of those good
vitamins to keep your blood pumping. Does lacroix count as
hydration because I drink so much of it? Totally right? Sure,
kind of water, it's a liquid um. And then little
(42:48):
tricks like sleeping on your back, don't squint, moisturized and
don't overwah either. You know, we've talked a lot about
oils being stripped away or the underproduction of oil contributing
to that dried, wrinkled appearance. Don't get too crazy with
your face wash if your skin can't handle it. Yeah, listen,
I'm all on board for not ever washing and for moisturizing,
(43:12):
But I'm gonna sleep on my stomach and squint if
the sun is in my eyes or if I'm incredulous
like you are at the advice to sleep on your back. Indeed,
I am not a back sleeper either. I don't like it,
and I think that but that might be a psychological thing.
I don't know. But then there are lots of topical aids.
I don't want to say cures or fixes, but we
(43:34):
mentioned the alpha hydroxy acids, which are natural fruit acids
that can help get rid of that top layer of
skin and might help boost collagen. You've got retinoids uh
trent nowhen which is like a it's a vitamin A product,
is the only f d A approved topical rankle treatment.
It can help reduce those fine lines and even repair
sun damage. I am on Tretton Owen slather my face
(43:56):
with it every night. Nice. I mean, I guess, I
guess it's nice. I guess it's nice. My dermatologist tells
me it's it's smart for it for me to do.
So we'll see. Well, another dermatologist recommended UH product would
be vitamin C, which can increase collagen production, protect against
sun damage, correct pigmentation problems, and improve inflammation. There's the
(44:19):
powerful antioxidant i'd a bin own which can reduce roughness
and dryness. And you know we talked about human growth factor,
and then penta peptides, which are apparently these are a
type of protein, but it's apparently a super product that
can help boost collagen production. Just it's just making me
think about how how simple it was in my grandmother's
(44:42):
day when they just put on some vasoline, which, f y,
I is not a moisturizing ingredient. It is a barrier
product that locks moisture in. So apply your moisturizer and
then your vasoline. Yeah, it's not non chromogenic, right, it
can clog your pores. I think so. Um, but yeah, no,
I mean your note about our grandmother's I mean I
was looking at a picture of my grandparents who died
(45:04):
very young. They died in their sixties or late sixties,
and um, they look so old. And I don't mean
that as a judgment. I just mean that culturally, it
seems like there's more of this embrace of the look
as young as you feel. Whereas with my grandparents, for instance,
(45:28):
at the age of you know, sixty eight, they already
looked the way that I just picture someone who's eighty five.
There was no like, I'm just you know, my grandparents
were very like, I'm just not gonna mess with any
of that stuff. Well, I wondered though, generationally, if it
has to do with even just basic things like a
lot more smokers, a lot less sunscreen. Yeah, my mom
(45:52):
was known to lie out in the yard with baby
oil on. So yeah. And and her mom was a heavy,
heavy chain smoker and a daily Scotch drinker, and that
is what killed her. There you go, not to be
too depressing, just keep moisturizing people and drink lots of
water and quit smoking. But what do you think though
(46:13):
about our concern over wrinkles, especially at our age, because
this is something that I've noticed as I you know,
my my twenties closed out and into my thirties. Wrinkles
are a common topic of conversation with my girlfriends and me,
and so many times when it happens, I'll stop and
be like, wait, what are we talking about? This is ridiculous?
(46:36):
Should we be caring about this? Well, I I am
often mistaken for someone much younger than my age, which
I appreciate, which made it even more upsetting when I
did look in the mirror the other day after having
I hadn't slept well, I was dehydrated, so like that
does mess up your skin, but I had like all
sorts of lumpiness under my eyes. I've got the intense
(46:57):
ripple between the eyebrows, I've got the ripples on the forehead.
I was just like, oh my god, am I just
gonna look like a super aging college student here in
a minute? Like I don't. I don't want to look old.
I don't want to be wrinkled. And then I felt
that feeling come over me of I just want to
look how I feel. I don't want to look wrinkled,
and so then I was like, oh, boy, okay, I
(47:21):
need to be like thinking about my my mental status
when it comes to wrinkles and aging because I feel like,
I'm on the precipice of not accepting it very well.
I'm so curious, especially if there are older listeners listening, UM,
to know whether this is something unique to say older millennials,
(47:44):
like we are of worrying about our wrinkles earlier because
there's so many options now, Um, we are told, you know,
about all of the prejuvenation steps we should be taking.
Whether it was something when they were thirty that all
them and all their girlfriends were talking about, or if
this is this is a byproduct, you know what I mean.
(48:04):
I'm just I'm really curious to know that that kind
of generational cultural issue too, because I just again, I,
like I said at the top of the podcast, I
worry more about worrying about it because there's there's so
much other stuff in my life to manage. It's like,
I don't want to worry about crowsfeet. I just I
(48:26):
really don't. But it's hard not to when you look
in the mirror and you have those days where your
face looks bizarre and unfamiliar, because that happens partially due
to hormones and and it is it's tough to fight
that those little voices in your head that start piping in,
especially when you're looking in the mirror and you're like,
oh good, more fine lines under my eyes and a
(48:48):
new ZiT. And then you see a photo of yourself
in your early twenties and you see how young you looked.
That's a strange sensation too, and the realization of why
didn't I notice how amazing my skin looked when I
was twenty two? Why wasn't I wearing more sunscreen? Yeah?
(49:12):
Why wasn't I more comfortable? And how I was? Yeah?
Oh yeah, seriously, that's the thing. I mean, thirty is
amazing because you know, at least in my experience, I'm
more comfortable in my skin literally and figuratively than I
ever have been in my life. And I'm like, but man,
if we could just pare that with my twenty two
year old face, what a combo aging. So, before we
(49:36):
get a listener mail, Caroline and I have a very
special guest to introduce. Who was hosting your new favorite podcast?
Oh nice, Thank you, Julie Douglas, host of Stuff of Life. Welcome,
Thank you, thanks for having me, Thanks for letting me
like invade the podcast room and hang out here in
the corner and makesmores and then all this little other
(50:00):
weird rattley things I was doing. You're an amazingly quiet
s'more maker. I mean, we just did that whole episode
with you making like hundreds of them and we didn't
hear anything. Why is the marshmallows really and then cushion, Yeah,
they do cushion, and I mean you've got the Graham
crackers snap, but then the marshmallows really do buffer that,
And that is not what the podcast is about to
(50:20):
for wondering, It's not the stuff of s'mores, the stuff
of smores, the stuff of although earlier we were talking
about candy, and there's there's a possibility that candy could
make its way as a topic. So tell us about
the stuff of life. What can we expect to learn about? Well,
let me tell you, um, it is a podcast that
(50:41):
really centers on kind of picking apart a certain story
or a topic. Um. For instance, we have one on
emergencies and fear and how they seize us and how
we react to them. And we talked to a couple
of experts. Um. One of them is a former firefighter
and the other one as a squat team member, and
(51:03):
so they kind of have like their boots on the ground,
and they talk about how to deal with the fear
that you're experiencing during some sort of crazy emergency or such.
And then, um, we talked to a couple of how
Stuff Works folks about their own experiences and how they've
dealt with it. So the podcast really kind of takes um,
you know, the expert voice, but also all of the wonderful,
(51:26):
amazing talented folks here and it kind of gets them
in on the game. And uh, and then we have
some wonderful sound design by Noel Brown, our producer also
Stuff One Ever told you producer extraordinary. Yeah. Well, and
for people who are familiar with How Stuff Works podcasts,
the Stuff of Life is a different audio experience. And
(51:51):
by different, I mean it's such a Richard soundscape. Uh yeah,
and Noel is amazing. I mean that's he's got original
composition in there and he makes at all sound beautiful.
And that's the really cool thing is that, you know,
I kind of cobbled together some voice over and try
to make sense of the story and all the different
clips that we bring in. And this guy Nol whom
(52:13):
I'm staring at right now. Yeah, we're all looking real
hard at you know, go hard that guy we're right there. Um,
like he's listening sort of for the emotional soundscape. I
don't want to get to ethereal here, but he really
does listen for that, And so I think it's really
interesting because it kind of melds those two different kinds
of understandings that we get both of the spoken word
(52:34):
but also through through sound cues. Well, what inspired you
to create this new podcast? You know? I just um,
I'm an editor at heart, I think, and so I
just thought to myself, I really would like to play
in this form, and I'd like to be able to
take in all these different voices, particularly here at how
(52:57):
stuff works, because I feel like but here has an
amazing base of knowledge to work off of and has
really interesting perspectives. Let's try to bring all that together
into one podcast. Is there something that you've learned so
far in your research that has just let your brain
on fire? I don't know if I should reveal it here,
(53:19):
and I'm not sure how Josh Clark of Stuff You
Should Know feels about revealing this. But he was a
b boy, like like he won competition since he was
in his paper and yes, yes, I seeing Josh walk
through the halls low these many years, I would not
(53:41):
that he was a break dancer and his button up
plaid shirt. That's amazing. That is the stuff of life
that I can't wait to learn about, Julia well, and
I'm hoping that that we get to even you alls
find voices as well, because that will be an episode
on men dancing and in particular why men don't dance
and Caroline by Caroline doesn't dance either, but yes, men too,
(54:04):
definitely men. I think I saw you dance at the
company dance company dance party in our house. That works
prom I might have uh shaken a leg or two. So, Julie,
where can people go to listen to stuff of life?
I'm glad you asked. Um. You can go to many
fine purveyors of podcasts, including iTunes. And the first episode
(54:28):
will be published on January twenty seven, and then it'll
be a weekly podcast. And so what should expect is
like the first one will be a little bit more
around the meat side, and then the second one that
follows will be more of a companion piece too, and
sett'll be a little bit shorter and sometimes lighter. Well Julie,
we can't wait to tune in and stuff Mom never
(54:48):
told you, listeners, be sure you tune into the Stuff
of Life hosted by Julie Douglas because it's gonna be fantastic.
Thanks for having me on. Guess Well, listeners, we want
to hear from you younger, older our age. Do you
feel this aging angst and the wrinkle and crow sweet
and laugh lines angst as well? And also fellows too.
(55:12):
We want to hear your voices on it as well,
because you're being marketed to more than ever before about
your wrinkles. So right to us mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot Com is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
And we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. So, Kristen and I have a set
(55:39):
of letters here in the wake of our two parter
with a practical wedding founder, Meg Keen. And these are
both about name changes. Uh so, Michelle writes in your
recent podcast on a Feminist marriage, the topic of changing
your last name was discussed. When I'm married almost six
years ago, i changed my last name. I received a
(56:00):
lot of sideways looks from friends and co workers when
they asked if I would be changing my name or not.
I was shocked at the amount of negative feedback and
what I felt like was judgment for changing my last name.
It was a huge bummer during an exciting time in
my life. It was treated as if I was making
some kind of anti feminist statement. In reality, the reason
why I changed my last name was because my maiden
(56:22):
name was actually my dad's last name. My dad was
never really in my life, so I took this opportunity
to take a last name that actually meant something to
me during casual conversations with co workers. This type of
reasoning wasn't really something I wanted to bring up or
felt like I needed to justify. In the end, it
was my decision and I feel as though I made
the right one. Anyways, it was an interesting time in
(56:42):
my life and I thought i'd share the perspective from
someone who did change their last name. Well, So thank you, Michelle.
I appreciate it, and I feel like this is excellent
encouragement for all of us, regardless of how you feel
about any aspect of wedding or marriages, to maybe keep
your opinions to yourself when someone else is telling you
what they're planning to do with their lives. I've got
a let her here from Courtney, and she writes. My
(57:04):
husband and I got married a few years ago on
a Saturday. I had until noon the following Monday to
add him to my health insurance at work. I ran
into the HR office right after they opened that day,
marriage license in hand and asked lady working there to
add my husband as a dependent. I bet you haven't
had a chance to get your new Social Security card
or driver's license made with your new last name on
(57:26):
it yet, so there's nothing I can do for you,
she said, pushing the license forward. I told her I
wasn't changing my name and to add my husband immediately.
I wish I could say this was the last time
people have had issues with me not changing my name.
There are friends and family who insists on addressing me
by my husband's last name or using mrs. When I
(57:46):
prefer miss. However, there's one person in my life who
was pushed in the opposite direction of everyone else. My
sister in law tried really hard to convince my husband
to take my last name because it's the cooler us name.
We both liked the idea, but we're pretty sure his
parents would be extremely upset. In the end, we both
kept our own names. Thanks for the awesome shows and
(58:09):
good luck wedding planning well, Thanks Courtney, and thanks everybody
who's written into us mom stuff at house. Stuff works
dot Com is our email address and for links to
all of our social media as well as all of
our blogs, videos, and podcasts with our sources, including this one.
So you can learn more about Wrinkle's head on over
to stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more
(58:35):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stupp
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. Um. I was contemplating my forehead
wrinkles this morning as we were preparing to come into
the studio to record this episode, because they are intense.
(00:26):
I'm wearing bangs today, so Kristen's just looking at my
bangs right now. I was about to say I can't
comment because I mean, your bangs look great, thank you,
thank you. I'm getting them trimmed tomorrow actually, because I'm
starting to not be able to see. But they hide
a dark secret, and that is that I have intense
forehead wrinkles. And part of this issue is that I
(00:49):
tend to make faces, and I tend not to know
how um strong and apparent my facial expressions are until
I'm in a meeting and people are like, oh, why
don't you tell it's what you think, because I've clearly
made a face that's like, oh, this is insane. Uh yeah.
And so in the course of this research, I've discovered
(01:10):
that repetitive facial expressions can contribute to wrinkles. And there's
all sorts of factors in terms of what gives you
wrinkles when you get them, how bad and severe they're
going to be. Um, I don't I don't say bad
because some people might love their wrinkles. I am not
a fan of my forehead wrinkles. I have considered botox, Kristen.
(01:31):
But here's the thing. I love moving my eyebrows too much. Yeah,
the source of my power lies in my eyebrow expressions. Well,
and you can just keep rocking bangs? Yeah, why why
botox when you can bang? Can that that's going to
be our new or new thing? There we go? Well,
(01:52):
thanks or no, thanks to this research. I've had a
little trouble getting to sleep the past couple of days
because some of the articles that we read, we're talking
about how sleeping on your stomach and sleeping with your
face directly against your sheets, unless they're silk sheets, can
(02:13):
also lead to wrinkles because you stay in that position
all night. And I am a stomach sleeper to the max.
And in fact, I got up in the middle of
the night and when I got back into bed, it
was the first thing that I thought of as I
rolled over to get on my stomach in my like
(02:33):
weird burrito pillow over my head position that I prefer.
And it took me a little extra time to put
podcasts research out of my brain, and that is a hazard. Yeah,
it is, Well, you know, hearing about our wrinkle worries,
it's it's nothing new. We we've heard our mothers and
(02:53):
our grandmother's stress about their wrinkles. Well, I don't know,
maybe you haven't, I have, um, but this is some
thing that people have worried about and struggled with forever.
And this is gonna be one of those sminty episodes
where we do take it back to ancient Egypt and
ancient Greece and then we get to talk about the
Victorians too. But in response to that one listener who
(03:15):
months ago was teasing us about jumping from ancient Egypt
to the Victorians all the time, which we do because
those are our favorite people. There, there is a little
bit of stuff in between. Yeah, and really quickly, I
want to know that, Uh, I don't know that I
so much worry about my wrinkles as I worry about
worrying about my wrinkles, because I don't want to worry
(03:36):
about my wrinkles, Caroline. I don't want to care. I
want to accept my crow's feet and laugh lines and
not buy into all the marketing that we're going to
talk about in the second half of the podcast. Um,
but one thing that is unabashedly delightful and all of
this are the lengths that we have gone to, especially
(03:59):
we wim men, have gone to to avoid and erase
wrinkles throughout time, oh forever. And I mean it's it's wrinkles,
it's aging. I mean, it's that fear of getting old
and dying. But it's more than that, it's the fear
of just appearing to get older. Yeah, I mean, it's
the whole longstanding patriarchal cultural issue of women being valued
(04:24):
for youth and fertility and youthful beauty especially well, so
let's dive into this timeline. A lot of it's coming
from both Marie Claire and into the Gloss, in addition
to a couple other sources. But let's travel back to
ancient Egypt. There were a lot of women who underwent
this super time intensive process to create oil out of
(04:47):
fine you Greek, which then they'd rub all over themselves
to try to keep themselves moisturized and glistening and wrinkle free,
and Cleopatra allegedly bathed in the milk of hundreds of
donkeys because I guess when you're Cleopatra you can do that.
You can have people go milks and donkeys. Yeah, I'm
sure she smelled great, um, but you know she was
onto something because people the alpha hydroxy acids in milk
(05:11):
do actually have skin softening and potentially anti aging properties.
Like when you read about you know, there's so many
wrinkle treatments out there that don't work. They they're basically
snake oil. Alpha hydroxy acids are mentioned over and over
again is something that actually can help you fight physical
signs of aging. Now you say it's snake oil, but
if it's a Greek oil, then might it work. Possibly
(05:35):
if there we go, well, then if we jump to
the Greeks and Romans, they would mix mud and crocodile poop,
proving that you will do anything to fix your wrinkles
sometimes and in the Tang dynasty era in China, Empress
Wuzeschian created fairy powder so called fairy powder out of
(05:55):
mother Wart, which is an urban the mint family that's
also been you to treat and prevent uterine infections, so
it's multi purpose. Now, the next person we're going to
talk about probably has the most intensive supposed uh skin
regimen that I've ever heard of. Yeah. Uh. Sixteenth century
(06:20):
Hungarian countess and serial killer Elizabeth Bathory Douix said supposedly
coded herself in the blood of hundreds of virgins. And
I say coded herself, not bathed in, because in the
comments under one of these articles talking about historical wrinkle treatments,
somebody was like, hello, in the time it would take
(06:44):
to bleed out hundreds of virgins, the blood would have
like clumped up and coagulated, and I'm like, oh my god,
this is gross. So I think the more accurate phrase
would be to say that she coded herself in blood.
But I mean, this is a thing like Kim Kardashian
posted a photo of freaking social media getting a vampire
(07:05):
facial where they like, use your own blood and something
to like coat your face to use anti aging properties. Supposedly,
I'm horrified. Well, I super appreciate Mary, Queen of Scott's
bathing in white wine, which was said to improve complexion
and have antiseptic properties. And you know, if you want
(07:28):
to just relax, take a little sip of your bath
and there you go. Turn on some real housewives. Get
a real long crazy straw as you're sitting in the
tub human soup. Um. Well, Empress CC of Austria used
a cream that was a mix of spermacetti which n
b D. It's just the oil and the whale's head
(07:49):
U sweet almond oil and rose water on her face.
Where would she get the oil from a whale's head.
I'm sure her pet whale. Yeah, I mean, I guess
when you're an empress again, kind of like Leopatra and
her monkeys, right exactly. But don't worry, um, if you're
not into sper massetti and killing whales, you can just
(08:09):
use a mix like CC did of raw veal and
strawberries underneath the leather mast which sounds like she just puts,
which just sounds like a fancy cevich a, and then
get some tortilla chips. If you get your white wine
bath and your cevich a mask and cortina chips, I'll
(08:30):
tell you what you got it. You got yourself an afternoon.
I'm laughing, but I do honestly think it is fascinating
what people have done and still do in an effort
to retain a youthful appearance. And this leads us into
my favorite people, the Victorians. One of their tricks of
(08:54):
the trade was to use mercury to get rid of
wrinkles and blemishes. And it works. Is it destroys your skin,
It like peels it off and then it kills you.
So good job Victorians. Maybe they were like, well, at
least we'll go before you know. A lot of wrinkles
set in well, young um in the late eighteen hundreds, though,
(09:17):
the syringe is invented, and once we got the syringe,
we started deciding to try to fill the wrinkles on
our face with stuff such as paraffin ad idea. Yeah,
this is when we get the first chemicals being used
for face augmentation. Allah old school botox and paraffin was
the first one they used. And a German doctor was
(09:38):
the first person to take someone's own fat and injected
into their face to quote unquote correct quote unquote defects. Yeah.
So yeah, early on medicine getting involved in the beauty market.
I just love that people were like, oh, we bet
a syringe, like, let's go wild with it. Well, we
(10:01):
can't forget Madam Rawley's toilet mask or face glove, which
horrifyingly much like CC's leather mask, you would strap to
your face and then sleep in. And according to the
advertisement that we looked at uh famous society ladies, actresses, bells,
(10:22):
et cetera. Use it. That's a quote, Bells, et cetera.
Are we the etcetera? Yeah, we're the we're podcasters. And
they also said, in order to convince you it is
recommended by imminent physicians and scientific men. Well, if men say,
it's okay, scientific men, Kristen. But I think my favorite
product out of all of these was developed in nine
(10:45):
by stage mom Margaret Crayson, who discovered that her daughter Alice,
who was a concert pianist, had developed frown lines from
staring at her sheet music, or at least so she
thought so. She developed in cardboard triangles that could be
glued over wrinkle prone areas overnight to smooth out those
(11:07):
creases and prevent your facial muscles from scrunching while you slept,
because I guess you grimace in your dreams. And they
were called frownies. Yeah I need these, and they still
make them. Frownies are on the market in and I
need them because here's the thing my mother and I
share are really unfortunate trait, and that as we frown
(11:29):
in our sleep. How do you know this? I just
told you. Okay, okay, So Exhibit A. When I was
home for Christmas, my mom has a tendency to fall
asleep in her chair. So I'm like on my laptop
and I look up and my mother is asleep, but
she's got her face all scrunched up, and she's like,
(11:50):
she's got a deep frown going on in the line
between the eyes her knit brow. Um. I fell asleep
in eighth grade Civics cloud us one time, leaning up
against the wall, and a friend of mine woke me
up and was like, are you upset? What's And I
was like, I'm asleep, what's going on? Sorry? My teacher
(12:11):
in eighth grade? Uh, And she was like, look, you're
like frowning. You look so pissed. That's Exhibit B. Exhibit
See the other morning, when I was contemplating my forehead wrinkles,
I was also also contemplating the lines between my eyebrows,
because I clearly like, I'm really concerned about things in
my sleep. Oh yeah, I have a huge furrow between
(12:32):
my between my eyebrows. I just it adds character. We're
working out problems in her sleep, that's fine. No, mine
is definitely from during my wakeful hours. Uh, either nervously
knitting my brows or scowling. Um. But Caroline, I really
hope that you have Amazon primed yourself some frownies. I will,
(12:53):
I need to. It'll be great. And then, oh my god,
we could think of all of the social media fun
we can have. Sorry, I'm just getting off track, or
even big frowning. Why now and then? But another resource
that I think would be helpful for us and our
listeners to pick up would be the Ladies Dressing Room
and eight book by Baroness Staff, which has a lot
(13:16):
of advice that sounds remarkably like stuff you'd see on
today's beauty blogs. It's it's everything, it's it's everything about
your appearance that you could possibly think of. But there
is a specific wrinkle section with lots of advice to
watch those facial expressions Ladies. She writes, there would be
fewer wrinkles if people would correct themselves of certain bad habits.
(13:38):
She lists repeated frowning, lifting the eyebrows at every movement
for nothing at all, stereotyped artificial smiles, and watch out
readers sitting up late at night reading novels is infallible
for drawing that terrible network of crow's feet around the eyes,
(13:59):
which disfigure was the prettiest face. Well, you know what,
Baroness staff, you know what I have to say to her.
She's also racist because in her beauty advice she also
talked about how white skin is the only attractive skin
out there. There were problems there, there were some issues.
Eight three was not the most progressive time for white
(14:20):
Baroness is out there. Um, But her flagrant racism aside.
She did have some tips for washing your face. Apparently
I've been washing my face all wrong because I just, like,
you know, do it all at once and swished my
hands all around my face, which I think I have
(14:40):
a problem now that I say it out loud. Um.
She suggests washing your face from the bottom up and
wash your eyes from the temple to the nose, and
then just missed with water. Yeah, if you're in a
dry environment, missed your face with water for an extended
period of time, Like some of the millionaires in New
(15:01):
York whose skins suffer from overheated rooms. Okay, but this
also reminds me of those beauty sections in women's magazines
that they offer like beauty regimens for celebrities and women
who travel all the time. And I forget which celebrity
it was, but she was talking about how her trick
(15:22):
when she is on a plane is to miss her
face because of the recycled dry air and the plane.
I see that all the time in those women's magazines,
and I mean they still sell all types of face
missing water in stores. Uh. You should also try sacrifices,
according to Lady Staff, be like the one lady that
(15:43):
she talks about, and you just stay in bed all
day until you feel better and your creases have relaxed.
I love that rather than frowning, if something is getting
you down, don't frown, get in bed until it goes away.
But she does allow a few laugh induced Yes, is
because she says it's better to have one wrinkle more
(16:03):
and acquire a good quality than a smooth forehead and
the faults of a child. That being said, she urges
a little rest for the face four or five times
a day, no big deal. By shutting the eyes and
remaining perfectly still for one, two or five minutes when
it can be done without neglecting anything important and listeners.
(16:24):
This is uh has been a little awkward a couple
of times when I look over at the standing decks
next to me and Caroline is standing with her eyes
closed stock still. Well, I know because I fail at
it every time because as soon as I close my
eyes I started to frown. So it's you know, there's
no winning. Well, then when she gets your frownies, I
know then it'll be off that We could also take
(16:46):
a tip from the nineteen tens through the thirties when
radioactive masks, straps, patches, and cosmetics were all the race. Oh,
this is such a fascinating period when people went lady
gaga over radioactive stuff, including chin straps. Tell me about
these radio or chin straps please, yeah, So, okay, you
(17:09):
have to keep in mind the context of the time.
So Murray and Pierre Curry had done all this stuff
with radioactive materials that you know, the world was amazed
by these advancements in science. And so you get the
radio or chin straps, which you would you know, strapped
your face and they supposedly provided a continuous, steady current
of energy flowing into the skin, and before long, the
(17:32):
wrinkles have disappeared, the nerves have become strong and energized,
and the tired muscles have become braced up and ready
for service. What service? I haven't the slightest idea. You
also had chemo lite radioactive beauty plasma, which was supposedly
volcanic mud from the Carpathian Mountains that was to be
(17:52):
used as the daily cream. Wow, yeah, I mean that
that doesn't sound too far away from the mud and
crocodile poop of the ancient Romans and Greeks, right right.
And then there was so Radia, which contained thorium chloride
and radium bromide, which are both horrifyingly radioactive ingredients ps.
(18:16):
And then as we continue our timeline, we see in
the nineteen forties that injectable silicone becomes a thing for
the first time. In the seventies and eighties, injectable bovine
collagen is developed and people are once again injecting their
own fat into their faces. In between two thousand and
two thousand, twelve, botox treatments rose six hundred eighty per cent. Yeah,
(18:43):
there was some initial like battitudes about botox, you know,
being a neurotoxin, and so people weren't so into it.
But they've gotten over those, uh, those quibbles for sure,
and now botox is super common. It's even used in
your armpits if you have hyper hydro this there we go. Yeah,
it's people use it to help ease migraines. I mean,
(19:05):
they use it for everything, and it can even do
your laundry. Just just keep a jar of botox around. Well,
we've now arrived at our anti aging, anti wrinkle industry today,
and we've got lots to talk about, including how wrinkles
are actually formed scientifically, and we'll talk about that when
(19:27):
we come right back from a quick break. You know,
I feel like when I first attended to make a website,
things would have been easier if I'd had square Space
at my disposal instead of just putting pictures of Corgis everywhere,
which you know, I eventually did take it down. So
maybe now is the time to use square space to
(19:48):
build my personal website, corgy space dot com, right, Caroline, Yeah,
exactly what else would it be? The great thing about
square Space is that their sites look professionally designed regardless
of your skill level, and there's no coding required. They've
got intuitive and easy to use tools, and you can
get a free domain if you sign up for a year.
So you can start your free trial site today at
(20:10):
square space dot com. And when stuff mom never told
you listeners decided to sign up for squarespace, be sure
to use the offer code mom stuff to get ten
percent off your first purchase Squarespace. You should. So it
(20:34):
should come as no surprise to anyone listening that today's
anti aging business is booming at the plan words because
it's mostly thanks to the baby boomer generation. According to
Transparency Market Research in August, they predicted by twenty nineteen,
the anti aging market will be worth a hundred and
(20:54):
nine point seven billion dollars and for a little active
they valued it at a hundred and twenty two point
three billion dollars. In Granted, you will see different valuations
depending on what you include in the beauty and anti
aging market. If you're including just like creams and lisens
(21:17):
and potions, if you're including dermatological services and things like that. Um,
but that should just give you a little tip as
to how booming this business is. And a lot of that,
like you said, is thanks to the boomer generation, people
born between ninety six and nineteen sixty four are the
biggest consumers of anti aging products and services. But people
(21:40):
our age are all about this newer uh industry of
projuvenation treatments. Yeah. So, like you know, I've seen in
plenty of magazines that women in their early twenties should
start using anti aging products. And really, I think the
key is just to use sunscreen like our mothers did.
Tell us that that is like super key and and
(22:03):
um slowing down the aging process. But also I knew
a girl at my last job who in her early
twenties started getting botox in her forehead because she was like, well,
this is how you prevent wrinkles. You just keep the
muscles from moving. Oh, listen for a little bit of
sad news today. Before we came into the podcast, Studio
news broke that a beauty queen in Brazil named Raquel Santos,
(22:27):
who's twenty eight years old, die undergoing a wrinkle surgery.
It was called a Chinese mustache and it is supposed
to remove the wrinkles like around your your mouth years old.
Oh my god, I've never heard of that procedure, and
that's so tragic and apparently mean. She'd apparently undergone lots
(22:48):
of you know, plastic surgery and procedures like that. But listen, yeah,
I mean that it's not worth it. Nope, yikes, um,
But it is interesting to see I did not reel
eyes that this market, the anti aging market, is actually booming.
The biggest in the United States. It's huge in North America, Europe,
(23:08):
and the Asia Pacific region, but super big among American women,
who lead the way in those anti aging facial skincare
products when compared to women in Germany, France, in the UK.
So we know that we've spent a ton of time
throughout history worrying about wrinkles, and we spent a ton
of money today worrying about wrinkles. But what causes them? Anatomically?
(23:34):
What is going on? Because I mean probably every single
listener has heard the connection to the sun. I mean,
you're likeliest to form wrinkles on your face, neck, hands,
and arms because those are the most exposed to the sun.
But what's going on to to make our wrinkles? Well,
we looked at this interesting bit of research coming out
(23:56):
of Brown University that was looking at this theoretical model
of our wrinkles form in a bunch of different materials.
They weren't necessarily writing about human skin, but they were
arguing that their same logic could possibly hold true for skin.
So basically, when something wrinkles, you have a stiff surface,
which is called the stiffness boundary layer with softer sub layers.
(24:19):
But when you compress it, it begins to buckle and
form patterns on the surface. And as that compression increases,
groups of ripples then become a single crease where the
surface dips down to the sub layers. Is it just
making me think of ruffles potato chips? Well, but at
least those are salty and delicious, I know, potato chips. Well,
(24:41):
so you mentioned the sun, Kristen, what else can cause
those wrinkles as pesky wrinkles? Well, first of all, we've
got our jeans, I mean before we even get into
the sun, obviously when we're given jeans in the womb,
and your genes determine your skin structure and texture. But
(25:01):
the biggest wrinkle maker really is the sun because of
that U V exposure and that accelerates aging and is
the primary cause of early on set wrinkles because those
UV raised break down our skins connective fibers, collagen, and elastin,
which means that our skin loses strength and flexibility, which
(25:25):
leads to that premature sagging and wrinkling. Man, I'm telling
you go get some self tanner cream. Like, as much
as I love being in the sun, I am I,
it's just so bad for you. It's so bad for
your skin and your body, and just don't do it.
And of course age obviously ages a factor. As you age,
(25:47):
your skin becomes less elastic and more fragile. It also
produces less oil, which makes it appear more wrinkled. You
have your deeper down fat diminishing, which contributes to saggy
or skin and therefore more pronounced wrinkles. And for anyone
who's ever flipped through a woman's magazine probably knows, diet
contributes to it as well. You have sugary and starchy
(26:11):
foods that promote inflammation and accelerate aging because they're associated
with again that collagen and alassin becoming stiff and less springy.
And the chemicals in foods like say white bread and
my beloved potato chips helped make us even more susceptible
to sun damage. And if you're not getting enough good
(26:34):
fats think avocados, think salmon to keep those skin that
skin looking supple, that could contribute to wrinkles as well.
You need to get all of those good veggies. The
vitamins in them promote collagen and protein. Not getting enough
protein means that you're going to have more cracks and
wrinkles in the skin. And in case you needed more
of a reason, you should also be drinking plenty of water, which,
(26:57):
even though that's not going to be some miracle cure,
all we your skin is nicely moisturized, whether that is
through drinking a ton of water or actually using lotion,
just the appearance of wrinkles will not be as obvious.
And stress is a major culprit as well, because stress
triggers the release of the hormone cortisol, which causes cell damage,
(27:17):
and so that inflammatory response isn't good for our skin either.
And if you're really stressed, you probably aren't getting great sleep,
and that's going to exacerbate the problem as well, because
sleep helps counteract the effects of stress because that's when
our growth hormones are released, right, So human growth hormone
basically works with your collagen to maintain skin and muscle composition.
(27:39):
But as you age, your body's production of collagen slows,
which leads to that looser and thinner skin. And then
there's the basics that we say in almost any health episode,
you need to be getting enough exercise, not drinking excess alcohol,
not smoking. Studies have found that exercisers skin is actually
(28:01):
thicker and has more healthy collagen. Exercises. Also, as you've
probably read, two, an anti inflammatory wonder drug, and for
anyone who has tied one on, you probably know the
next morning your skin is so so so dry. I mean,
in addition to the inflammation response to alcohol triggers and
(28:23):
the broken capillaries and cell damage that it can cause
as our bodies metabolize it, it dehydrates us and leaves
us prone to fine lines, dullness, and enlarged pores. And
I can firsthand tell you the horror of looking at
hangover face skin. It's different in your thirties, that's for sure,
(28:46):
Ever even times in the twenties. Well, also, everybody please
quit smoking today right now, because smoking reduces blood and
nutrient supplies and that alarates aging. Not to mention that
repeated kissy face you're making when you're sucond on a
cigarette is part of the whole Victorians being right about
(29:09):
not making repeated facial expressions. So those repeated facial expressions
end up causing those creases. They get compressed over and
over again. So don't squint. People wear sunglasses where your
moisturizing I cream with peptides. Those are proteins. Don't worry
about it, just google it. Repetitive smiling, although come on, like,
(29:29):
let's let's have our laugh lines. These quote unquote injuries
are what cause fine lines. That repeated use of facial
muscles causes grooves to form beneath the skin, and as
you age, there's less ability to bounce back. And I
really enjoyed us speaking of grooves the description in a
(29:52):
study in the British Journal of Dermatology, which said that
a wrinkle isn't really different from the rest of your skin.
It's just what they call a figuration change quote like
the grooves worn in an old glove. Thanks yeah, thanks,
thanks a lot. But okay, so we we've been talking
(30:13):
about all this stuff about how aging accelerates. What we're
doing to ourselves that could be contributing to the natural
aging and wrinkling process. And beyond just sheer like human vanity,
there are other reasons that maybe we should be concerned
about wrinkles and how we perceive them. Uh. There was
this one study that found that steady participants rated the
(30:34):
faces of older adults as sadder and angrier, even though
their expressions were neutral, basically because their facial wrinkles were
causing the mouth to drop and the forehead to crinkle,
features that other people often perceive as anger or sadness.
So basically all old folks have resting bitch face according well, sad,
(31:01):
resting sad bitch base. Yeah. Yeah. And the implications for this,
I mean, this sounds like, oh, that's too bad, but
their actual implications for this because it could affect, the
study author said, how older adults are treated in medical
settings and in a time when people of a certain
age are maybe losing people in their social and family groups,
(31:24):
if they look negative, angry, and sad, they are less
likely to be considered approachable, so it might be even
harder to form new connections with new people. And this
also echoes previous research which found that whipper snappers like
us have a hard time determining older people's emotions from
(31:46):
their faces because, as they say, wrinkles muddle expression. Yeah,
and so there was, um, there was some reading that
we did where older women were interviewed, and we'll talk
about this in a little bit, but a lot of
them said, you know, I'm just tired of people assuming
that I'm tired and angry all the time, Like I
don't feel that way, but people look at me. It's
(32:06):
like when I fell asleep in eighth grade? Are you
angry about your sleeping? What's going on? He so angry
about civics? No, I'm just I frown and then it
makes a wrinkle. Sorry, but here's a question pertinent to
stuff I've never told you. How do we talked about
age a lot, but what about sex? Do guys and
(32:27):
gals experience wrinkles differently physically and culturally? The answer is
the yeah. Yeah. So there was a Japanese study that
found that in general, men had more severe wrinkles than women.
But but this trend reverses or completely disappears once you
(32:49):
get up into the oldest groups that they surveyed. So
in all of the age groups they looked at men
showed increased forehead wrinkles compared with women. So maybe I'll
have to do some forehead wrinkle comparison with some guys. Um.
But there were no gender dependent differences found in upper
eyelid wrinkles. As my mother would tell you, because she
wants to. She literally talks all the time about how
(33:09):
she wants to go get a couple's eye lift with
my father. Why what does that do? Well, obviously it
lifts your eyes, but it makes you look younger, it
gets rid of the wrinkles and folds over your eyes. Yeah,
she's positively gleeful that her eye doctor told her that
because her upper lid drooped so much, it could be
(33:30):
considered a medically necessary procedure for her vision. It sounds uncomfortable. Oh,
but there was another study I was looking at, So
be careful if you go in for an eyelift, because
they looked at they showed basically ie and facial expressions
to study participants, and before the eye lift, the person
(33:53):
was judged as being you know, angry, negative, tired. But
when they did some computer magic and made the person
look as if she'd had an eye lift, the study
participants again thought she looks angry, negative and unapproachable because
it had been so severe that now the eyebrows were
way up and people were like, she looks like she's
(34:16):
mad at me. So there is that sweet spot. So
if you're planning to make an eyelift appointment, tell your
doctor not to go nuts moral the story, just leave
your face alone or or that. Yeah. I was really
fascinated though, by a study from two thousand nine in
the journal Aesthetic Surgery, which found that women tend to
(34:38):
develop laugh lines more because we have fewer sweat glands
around our mouths compared to men, and having fewer sweat
or sabacious glands mean that we produce less oil, which
protects our skin and keeps it soft. Yeah. We also
have fewer blood vessels, and so that means less blood
(34:58):
flow to the mouth re gen, which is interesting because
it's that blood flow that like keeps you looking all
peppy and unwrinkled. Might be like lessened blood flow to
the mouth region. Like, yeah, that does sound like it
goes back to that Hungarian countess, doesn't it. Um, But
women also have uh muscles around our mouths that are
(35:21):
closer to the skin, which might pull the skin and tighter,
causing more wrinkles and hormones because hormones. Hormones do everything right, Yeah,
I mean, at first, estrogens are helpful. They promote healing,
and that actually means this is pretty cool. Women tend
to heal from wounds faster. But when menopause hits, your
(35:42):
blood flow is reduced again contributing to lines and furrows,
and you have that drop obviously in estrogen going on,
not to mention the decrease in fat or sea bum
secreted by our sweat glands, which of course is compounded
by our lower concentration of sweat glands. Right. Meanwhile, I mean,
(36:02):
women who have done hormone replacement therapy reportedly have fewer
wrinkles than those not taking any hormones at all, which,
so I mean there's another thing to think about. But
the thing that compounds all of this too, especially for women,
is the culture how we perceive and treat women with
(36:24):
visible signs of aging. Yeah, we puilled some interesting information
from Laura heard Clark's book Facing Age, Women, Growing Older
and Anti Aging Culture. Uh So, she talked to a
whole bunch of doctors and plastic surgeons and dermatologists. She
also talked to a large group of aging women, and
one doctor she talked to said that overall, they're seeing
(36:47):
a lot more both men and women coming in earlier,
earlier being ages thirty five to fifty, wanting more subtle
results through non surgical interventions, because it used to be
you didn't have such a broad availability of you know,
the botox and the all the different types of fillers
and things like that that you have now. But now
(37:09):
that they're available, we're seeing more younger people, both men
and women, coming in and saying, oh, well, since it's
not a drastic surgery, like I feel more comfortable with it,
so yeah, let's just pump some stuff into these wrinkles. Yeah.
Whenever I go to my dermatologist's office, whenever I'm waiting
in the room, the exam room for her to come in,
(37:29):
I always look at the men's botox brochures because it's
just fascinating to even see that advertisement targeted at older gents.
But still though women do make up the bulk of
the demand for both surgical and non surgical cosmetic procedures,
and the explanations provided by the doctors that Clark talked
to I had a lot to do with stuff that
(37:52):
we talked about on the podcast all the time. The
doctors acknowledged the pervasiveness of media messages about women's attractiveness
and said that this whole like surgical or non surgical
intervention thing might just be an extension of their other
quote beauty work efforts like trying to wear the right
clothes and makeup and hair to be the most flattering
(38:13):
to your age figure, et cetera. But they also acknowledge
that there's just a lot of pressure on women to
look good versus men. One even said, yeah, there's this
attitude that women get old and men just age. Yeah,
I mean it's the whole thing. If we talk about hair,
when our hair turns gray, which mine has started to do,
(38:33):
it is a bit more daunting for women because guys
turned into silver foxes and women just start looking kind
of old. Well, men, I think are more valued for
being like, oh, a distinguished older man who probably has
accumulated more wealth and power, whereas a woman tends to
be valued in her younger years for her beauty and fertility. Fertility. Yeah, yeah,
(39:02):
it all goes back to sex and babies. But it's
not necessarily just to turn back the clock and look young.
More commonly, people have been telling their doctors that they
just want their outsides to match their insides and get
rid of this whole haggard, tired, negative look. And some
doctors even framed it when they spoke with Clark, like,
(39:23):
it's just part of a health regimen with appearance and
psychological benefits, that women who simply want to look natural
and be healthy, and they just want their faces to
reflect that. And that's something that I hear echoed from
my mom increasingly as she's gotten older, her being vocally
insistent with how young and vibrant and healthy she feels,
(39:48):
and that she never wants to look old and it
is and and so that that idea of matching the
inside to the outside definitely resonated. And I can understand that,
especially if there's an assumption other people if you're perceived
to look tired and upset, whereas you're you're just you
and you feel totally fine. Yeah. And so Clark argues
(40:12):
that these sort of casual attitudes about what I just
want to look how I feel have led to increasingly
unattainable appearance demands for women in later life. These are
costly procedures. They are they can be time consuming, and
she had interviewed a whole bunch of women in the
(40:32):
late nineties before Botox super took off, before the mediorc
rise of all of these non surgical interventions, and across
the board a dent unanimously, they all had strong negative opinions,
everything from sadness to shock to dismay about their wrinkles.
They all expressed the desire to eliminate them, and Clark
(40:52):
calls this the internalization of ages, conceptualizations of physical attractiveness. Yeah,
I mean, women looking at themselves in the mirror describe
themselves looking crabby, grouchy, withered, miserable. And the older they were,
the stronger their reactions were because they interpreted their wrinkles
(41:16):
as signs of deterioration and of course a sign that hey,
you know what, at some point you're gonna die. And
culturally too, it goes to the whole thing of like,
not only do aging men become distinguished, but for many
aging women, as we talked about a lot during our
episode on Women of a Certain age, it's a process
of feeling like you are disappearing. Yeah, exactly, so you know,
(41:41):
these women expressed the desire to have their wrinkles disappear.
Can we should? We like? What are what are the
options that are out there that people think actually work well?
You have the injections, which thankfully are no longer limited
to paraffin. You know, have safer things like botox and
(42:04):
restalan and other kinds of fillers. And then, of course
you've got other medical and spat treatments like laser and
light resurfacing, chemical peels, dermibration. I've had dermibration done. It
feels real weird, like a like a robot cat is
licking your face. It's real weird. Have you had it done?
I've had micro demibration. I'm sure it's the same thing. Um.
(42:25):
Of course, there's all the inside out stuff that we
already talked about, eating plenty of healthy fats, fruits, vegetables,
getting all of that good hydration, all of those good
vitamins to keep your blood pumping. Does lacroix count as
hydration because I drink so much of it? Totally right? Sure,
kind of water, it's a liquid um. And then little
(42:48):
tricks like sleeping on your back, don't squint, moisturized and
don't overwah either. You know, we've talked a lot about
oils being stripped away or the underproduction of oil contributing
to that dried, wrinkled appearance. Don't get too crazy with
your face wash if your skin can't handle it. Yeah, listen,
I'm all on board for not ever washing and for moisturizing,
(43:12):
But I'm gonna sleep on my stomach and squint if
the sun is in my eyes or if I'm incredulous
like you are at the advice to sleep on your back. Indeed,
I am not a back sleeper either. I don't like it,
and I think that but that might be a psychological thing.
I don't know. But then there are lots of topical aids.
I don't want to say cures or fixes, but we
(43:34):
mentioned the alpha hydroxy acids, which are natural fruit acids
that can help get rid of that top layer of
skin and might help boost collagen. You've got retinoids uh
trent nowhen which is like a it's a vitamin A product,
is the only f d A approved topical rankle treatment.
It can help reduce those fine lines and even repair
sun damage. I am on Tretton Owen slather my face
(43:56):
with it every night. Nice. I mean, I guess, I
guess it's nice. I guess it's nice. My dermatologist tells
me it's it's smart for it for me to do.
So we'll see. Well, another dermatologist recommended UH product would
be vitamin C, which can increase collagen production, protect against
sun damage, correct pigmentation problems, and improve inflammation. There's the
(44:19):
powerful antioxidant i'd a bin own which can reduce roughness
and dryness. And you know we talked about human growth factor,
and then penta peptides, which are apparently these are a
type of protein, but it's apparently a super product that
can help boost collagen production. Just it's just making me
think about how how simple it was in my grandmother's
(44:42):
day when they just put on some vasoline, which, f y,
I is not a moisturizing ingredient. It is a barrier
product that locks moisture in. So apply your moisturizer and
then your vasoline. Yeah, it's not non chromogenic, right, it
can clog your pores. I think so. Um, but yeah, no,
I mean your note about our grandmother's I mean I
was looking at a picture of my grandparents who died
(45:04):
very young. They died in their sixties or late sixties,
and um, they look so old. And I don't mean
that as a judgment. I just mean that culturally, it
seems like there's more of this embrace of the look
as young as you feel. Whereas with my grandparents, for instance,
(45:28):
at the age of you know, sixty eight, they already
looked the way that I just picture someone who's eighty five.
There was no like, I'm just you know, my grandparents
were very like, I'm just not gonna mess with any
of that stuff. Well, I wondered though, generationally, if it
has to do with even just basic things like a
lot more smokers, a lot less sunscreen. Yeah, my mom
(45:52):
was known to lie out in the yard with baby
oil on. So yeah. And and her mom was a heavy,
heavy chain smoker and a daily Scotch drinker, and that
is what killed her. There you go, not to be
too depressing, just keep moisturizing people and drink lots of
water and quit smoking. But what do you think though
(46:13):
about our concern over wrinkles, especially at our age, because
this is something that I've noticed as I you know,
my my twenties closed out and into my thirties. Wrinkles
are a common topic of conversation with my girlfriends and me,
and so many times when it happens, I'll stop and
be like, wait, what are we talking about? This is ridiculous?
(46:36):
Should we be caring about this? Well, I I am
often mistaken for someone much younger than my age, which
I appreciate, which made it even more upsetting when I
did look in the mirror the other day after having
I hadn't slept well, I was dehydrated, so like that
does mess up your skin, but I had like all
sorts of lumpiness under my eyes. I've got the intense
(46:57):
ripple between the eyebrows, I've got the ripples on the forehead.
I was just like, oh my god, am I just
gonna look like a super aging college student here in
a minute? Like I don't. I don't want to look old.
I don't want to be wrinkled. And then I felt
that feeling come over me of I just want to
look how I feel. I don't want to look wrinkled,
and so then I was like, oh, boy, okay, I
(47:21):
need to be like thinking about my my mental status
when it comes to wrinkles and aging because I feel like,
I'm on the precipice of not accepting it very well.
I'm so curious, especially if there are older listeners listening, UM,
to know whether this is something unique to say older millennials,
(47:44):
like we are of worrying about our wrinkles earlier because
there's so many options now, Um, we are told, you know,
about all of the prejuvenation steps we should be taking.
Whether it was something when they were thirty that all
them and all their girlfriends were talking about, or if
this is this is a byproduct, you know what I mean.
(48:04):
I'm just I'm really curious to know that that kind
of generational cultural issue too, because I just again, I,
like I said at the top of the podcast, I
worry more about worrying about it because there's there's so
much other stuff in my life to manage. It's like,
I don't want to worry about crowsfeet. I just I
(48:26):
really don't. But it's hard not to when you look
in the mirror and you have those days where your
face looks bizarre and unfamiliar, because that happens partially due
to hormones and and it is it's tough to fight
that those little voices in your head that start piping in,
especially when you're looking in the mirror and you're like,
oh good, more fine lines under my eyes and a
(48:48):
new ZiT. And then you see a photo of yourself
in your early twenties and you see how young you looked.
That's a strange sensation too, and the realization of why
didn't I notice how amazing my skin looked when I
was twenty two? Why wasn't I wearing more sunscreen? Yeah?
(49:12):
Why wasn't I more comfortable? And how I was? Yeah?
Oh yeah, seriously, that's the thing. I mean, thirty is
amazing because you know, at least in my experience, I'm
more comfortable in my skin literally and figuratively than I
ever have been in my life. And I'm like, but man,
if we could just pare that with my twenty two
year old face, what a combo aging. So, before we
(49:36):
get a listener mail, Caroline and I have a very
special guest to introduce. Who was hosting your new favorite podcast?
Oh nice, Thank you, Julie Douglas, host of Stuff of Life. Welcome,
Thank you, thanks for having me, Thanks for letting me
like invade the podcast room and hang out here in
the corner and makesmores and then all this little other
(50:00):
weird rattley things I was doing. You're an amazingly quiet
s'more maker. I mean, we just did that whole episode
with you making like hundreds of them and we didn't
hear anything. Why is the marshmallows really and then cushion, Yeah,
they do cushion, and I mean you've got the Graham
crackers snap, but then the marshmallows really do buffer that,
And that is not what the podcast is about to
(50:20):
for wondering, It's not the stuff of s'mores, the stuff
of smores, the stuff of although earlier we were talking
about candy, and there's there's a possibility that candy could
make its way as a topic. So tell us about
the stuff of life. What can we expect to learn about? Well,
let me tell you, um, it is a podcast that
(50:41):
really centers on kind of picking apart a certain story
or a topic. Um. For instance, we have one on
emergencies and fear and how they seize us and how
we react to them. And we talked to a couple
of experts. Um. One of them is a former firefighter
and the other one as a squat team member, and
(51:03):
so they kind of have like their boots on the ground,
and they talk about how to deal with the fear
that you're experiencing during some sort of crazy emergency or such.
And then, um, we talked to a couple of how
Stuff Works folks about their own experiences and how they've
dealt with it. So the podcast really kind of takes um,
you know, the expert voice, but also all of the wonderful,
(51:26):
amazing talented folks here and it kind of gets them
in on the game. And uh, and then we have
some wonderful sound design by Noel Brown, our producer also
Stuff One Ever told you producer extraordinary. Yeah. Well, and
for people who are familiar with How Stuff Works podcasts,
the Stuff of Life is a different audio experience. And
(51:51):
by different, I mean it's such a Richard soundscape. Uh yeah,
and Noel is amazing. I mean that's he's got original
composition in there and he makes at all sound beautiful.
And that's the really cool thing is that, you know,
I kind of cobbled together some voice over and try
to make sense of the story and all the different
clips that we bring in. And this guy Nol whom
(52:13):
I'm staring at right now. Yeah, we're all looking real
hard at you know, go hard that guy we're right there. Um,
like he's listening sort of for the emotional soundscape. I
don't want to get to ethereal here, but he really
does listen for that, And so I think it's really
interesting because it kind of melds those two different kinds
of understandings that we get both of the spoken word
(52:34):
but also through through sound cues. Well, what inspired you
to create this new podcast? You know? I just um,
I'm an editor at heart, I think, and so I
just thought to myself, I really would like to play
in this form, and I'd like to be able to
take in all these different voices, particularly here at how
(52:57):
stuff works, because I feel like but here has an
amazing base of knowledge to work off of and has
really interesting perspectives. Let's try to bring all that together
into one podcast. Is there something that you've learned so
far in your research that has just let your brain
on fire? I don't know if I should reveal it here,
(53:19):
and I'm not sure how Josh Clark of Stuff You
Should Know feels about revealing this. But he was a
b boy, like like he won competition since he was
in his paper and yes, yes, I seeing Josh walk
through the halls low these many years, I would not
(53:41):
that he was a break dancer and his button up
plaid shirt. That's amazing. That is the stuff of life
that I can't wait to learn about, Julia well, and
I'm hoping that that we get to even you alls
find voices as well, because that will be an episode
on men dancing and in particular why men don't dance
and Caroline by Caroline doesn't dance either, but yes, men too,
(54:04):
definitely men. I think I saw you dance at the
company dance company dance party in our house. That works
prom I might have uh shaken a leg or two. So, Julie,
where can people go to listen to stuff of life?
I'm glad you asked. Um. You can go to many
fine purveyors of podcasts, including iTunes. And the first episode
(54:28):
will be published on January twenty seven, and then it'll
be a weekly podcast. And so what should expect is
like the first one will be a little bit more
around the meat side, and then the second one that
follows will be more of a companion piece too, and
sett'll be a little bit shorter and sometimes lighter. Well Julie,
we can't wait to tune in and stuff Mom never
(54:48):
told you, listeners, be sure you tune into the Stuff
of Life hosted by Julie Douglas because it's gonna be fantastic.
Thanks for having me on. Guess Well, listeners, we want
to hear from you younger, older our age. Do you
feel this aging angst and the wrinkle and crow sweet
and laugh lines angst as well? And also fellows too.
(55:12):
We want to hear your voices on it as well,
because you're being marketed to more than ever before about
your wrinkles. So right to us mom Stuff at how
stuff works dot Com is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
And we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. So, Kristen and I have a set
(55:39):
of letters here in the wake of our two parter
with a practical wedding founder, Meg Keen. And these are
both about name changes. Uh so, Michelle writes in your
recent podcast on a Feminist marriage, the topic of changing
your last name was discussed. When I'm married almost six
years ago, i changed my last name. I received a
(56:00):
lot of sideways looks from friends and co workers when
they asked if I would be changing my name or not.
I was shocked at the amount of negative feedback and
what I felt like was judgment for changing my last name.
It was a huge bummer during an exciting time in
my life. It was treated as if I was making
some kind of anti feminist statement. In reality, the reason
why I changed my last name was because my maiden
(56:22):
name was actually my dad's last name. My dad was
never really in my life, so I took this opportunity
to take a last name that actually meant something to
me during casual conversations with co workers. This type of
reasoning wasn't really something I wanted to bring up or
felt like I needed to justify. In the end, it
was my decision and I feel as though I made
the right one. Anyways, it was an interesting time in
(56:42):
my life and I thought i'd share the perspective from
someone who did change their last name. Well, So thank you, Michelle.
I appreciate it, and I feel like this is excellent
encouragement for all of us, regardless of how you feel
about any aspect of wedding or marriages, to maybe keep
your opinions to yourself when someone else is telling you
what they're planning to do with their lives. I've got
a let her here from Courtney, and she writes. My
(57:04):
husband and I got married a few years ago on
a Saturday. I had until noon the following Monday to
add him to my health insurance at work. I ran
into the HR office right after they opened that day,
marriage license in hand and asked lady working there to
add my husband as a dependent. I bet you haven't
had a chance to get your new Social Security card
or driver's license made with your new last name on
(57:26):
it yet, so there's nothing I can do for you,
she said, pushing the license forward. I told her I
wasn't changing my name and to add my husband immediately.
I wish I could say this was the last time
people have had issues with me not changing my name.
There are friends and family who insists on addressing me
by my husband's last name or using mrs. When I
(57:46):
prefer miss. However, there's one person in my life who
was pushed in the opposite direction of everyone else. My
sister in law tried really hard to convince my husband
to take my last name because it's the cooler us name.
We both liked the idea, but we're pretty sure his
parents would be extremely upset. In the end, we both
kept our own names. Thanks for the awesome shows and
(58:09):
good luck wedding planning well, Thanks Courtney, and thanks everybody
who's written into us mom stuff at house. Stuff works
dot Com is our email address and for links to
all of our social media as well as all of
our blogs, videos, and podcasts with our sources, including this one.
So you can learn more about Wrinkle's head on over
to stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more
(58:35):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works dot com
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