July 27, 2025

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We've all seen the commercials -- or maybe, because I'm in my 70s, these ads dominate on the stations that old coots watch. We see a closeup of a person with bags under their eyes. A miracle lotion is applied. Time-lapse photographs show the bags disappearing and smoothing out.

We're told that these effects last for "hours." That means you have to reapply it every day. Does it remain just as effective, week upon week? Or are there diminishing returns? We don't know.

All we know is that users say the results are "amazing, amazing, amazing." A woman whose eyebags disappeared gets emotional about being "beautiful."

I really hate to be a downer about this, and if I were in the presence of these people I would never be rude enough to say this, but ...

Removing your eyebags does not make you beautiful. Your eyebags are far more noticeable to you than to anybody else. You have been keying in on those eyebags for years. "Oh, I hate how I look!" you say. But nobody else cares about your eyebags. And losing them does not suddenly transform you into "beautiful."

If to you "beautiful" means smooth and youthful skin, removing eyebags does nothing significant, because you are old, and so is your skin. Cindy Crawford's treatments won't make you 18 again. That doesn't mean you can't be beautiful. There are lots of really beautiful old women and good-looking old men. (I'm not one of those, but I also don't expect to be.)

People young and old obsess about the facial features they dislike, but only in rare cases is the offending feature really a problem. Think of Julia Roberts. She has a huge smile. I can imagine that as a teenager, she might have obsessed about how awful it was to have such a giant mouth. But in her maturity, she was regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world precisely because of that wide and dazzling smile.

Then look at Jennifer Grey. She was amazing in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But we absolutely know that she hated her own nose. And it was, in fact, a prominent feature of her face. But we fell in love with her face with that nose.

Then she altered that nose with plastic surgery and she was unrecognizable. I'm sure she felt better when she looked in the mirror, but altering her nose did not make her more beautiful. It made her ordinary. She still has all her talent. But that delightful young woman, with the prominent nose, is gone. If we look for the Jennifer Grey we once loved, we can't find her in movies after the nose job. Oh, she has gotten jobs, she has worked, but ...

Streisand without the nose? Lady Gaga without the nose? Fuggedaboudit. Streisand understood that changing her nose might alter her gorgeous voice. So she didn't "fix" it.

And you know what? She is and always was beautiful and memorable with the nose, mostly because of how she used her whole face in her comic and dramatic roles. Those prominent features are part of overall character -- and rarely interfere with perceptions of beauty.

I once knew a beautiful young woman with a prominent nose who, defiantly, had decided she wanted to be a model. She understood that having a distinctive nose could easily be an asset. But I also understood perfectly when she decided to get plastic surgery.

Unlike with Michael Jackson's extreme nose obliteration, she and her surgeon decided to make her nose, not small, but simply less prominent. She still has a noticeable nose -- perhaps even a large one. But her confidence has grown by leaps and bounds with a more ordinary nose. She no longer felt the need to become a model. Instead of seeking fame through glamor, she's content to lead a more ordinary life. A happy life, from all the evidence. I always thought she was gorgeous, and she's gorgeous still.

So I don't oppose altering features of your face or body that really bother you. But I also urge you to consider whether those particular features that bother you really matter to anybody else. You may hate the bags under your eyes. But nobody else cares about them.

Do you hate crepey skin? Stay hydrated -- and accept that those fine little wrinkles sometimes happen and they don't make a difference to anybody but you.

Who are your favorite old people? I adored both of my grandmothers. My mom's mother hated her wrinkled face. She actually went through our family picture albums and cut out her own face. When my parents realized what she had done, they were outraged and hurt. Didn't she understand how much we loved her? How we adored that wrinkled face? She preferred not to include herself in our photographs rather than memorialize her wrinkles.

She had forgotten that my dad was a photographer, and he had the negatives of most of those pictures. Her attempt at visual censorship did not stand. Dad just replaced the cut-out pictures with new prints.

My dad's mother also hated being old. She dyed her hair and then adopted a dark wig, so that she never turned visibly grey. But it didn't keep her from looking her age. The amount of time and discomfort she devoted to hiding from her own age was wasted. We also loved her and found her beautiful. We would have felt that way if she'd had grey hair.

Her husband, my dad's father, was bald as an egg. He wore hats, back when men wore hats. But when hats were out of fashion, he went bareheaded. He looked great. And we adored him as the grand old man he was.

As my hair has thinned, I've discovered that photographs from a certain angle make me look bald. And you know what? I don't care! I cut my hair shorter now precisely so that it never looks like I'm trying to disguise my thinning hair with a comb-over. Because I don't want to look any more pathetic than I have to.

They aim these commercials at us old people so they can make money from our vanity. But let's aim our vanity at things that matter. My wife never colored her hair. One result was that when she ate school lunch with our youngest daughter, her schoolfriends thought that she was eating with her grandma.

But my wife and my daughter both laughed at this. Just because all their mothers dyed their hair didn't change the fact that my wife was that little girl's mother. And it meant that my wife never had to decide to grow out her dye job and live with white roots.

You know what? She is beautiful. And she has been beautiful every step of the way.

Young people don't need old people to pretend to be young. Being old is okay, and you can be beautiful and visibly old at the same time.

You know what makes you beautiful at every age? Smiles. Good cheer. Laughter. Kindness. Compassion. Wisdom. Genuine concern.

I've never heard of a child who rejected the love of a grandparent because that grandparent looked old.

Forget those commercials that capitalize on your personal obsessions. You look old? Great! It means you've lived a long time, and you aren't dead yet! Face the world with your actual face, and be proud of how you look.

But if you really can't get over this or that sore point, then it's your choice to try to deal with it, medically, surgically, or with makeup. It's nobody else's business, unless, like Michael Jackson, you re-form your face into something not human. (Even if you go there, we'll be polite and make no comments about your cosmetic mistakes.)

Look in the mirror. Then tell yourself, as often as you need to, "This is the face that my loved ones love -- as it is, and as it will be."