The Longevity Book: Live stronger. Live better. The art of ageing well.. Cameron Diaz

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      IN A BUSINESS THAT is obsessed with youth, I am no longer considered a young woman. This was made clear as soon as I hit the ripe old age of thirty-nine. I can’t tell you how many times a journalist asked me if as an actress, I was scared to turn forty. As these questions about my age seemed to become a consistent part of every press interview, I realized just how frightened we all are of getting older. We make jokes about it, or we see it as sad, as ugly, as dangerous.

      The conversation we have around ageing in our culture feels very misplaced to me. Am I afraid to turn forty? These people who were asking about my age in front of a camera weren’t wondering if I was afraid that my health might decline after forty. They weren’t concerned that my organs might experience the effects of ageing. They weren’t asking what ageing means to me, as a woman, as a human being, as a living organism with an expiration date.

      They were saying, “Aren’t you afraid that the death of your career is imminent because you don’t look twenty-five anymore?”

      The funny thing is, those people who suggested that I’d reached my expiration date at an age when I still felt pretty damn good were actually doing me a real favour: they were jump-starting my thought process about what ageing is and what kind of impact it will have on me. The conclusion I came to was that as long as I get to keep on ageing, I’m pretty lucky. Not everyone has the opportunity to grow old. Some people die before they have a chance to celebrate another birthday.

      So to answer the questions those journalists asked about how my opinion of myself has changed as my looks have changed, my answer is that ageing is a privilege and a gift. As we get older, I believe beauty appreciates, not depreciates. It grows, not fades. With age, I have developed a more nuanced understanding of what beauty really is. Beauty is not just something you are born with. Beauty is something you grow into.

      As I start this next phase of my journey, I feel proud of where I’ve come from and curious about what’s ahead. I don’t know what life will hold for me. But I am ready. Because I know myself better than I did years ago, and I trust myself to make good decisions, or at least to do my best. Because I value the lessons that I’ve learned, especially in the last decade, and I look forward to seeing what kinds of new understandings the decades ahead will bring.

      WHERE DID YOU LEARN ABOUT BEING BEAUTIFUL?

      My first model of beauty was my mother. I don’t think I’m being partial when I say this: my mum is a beautiful woman. She has always had full lips, glowing skin, and blue eyes with a depth of grey that draws you in. She possesses the kind of beauty that shines from the inside out. So as far as I was concerned, she never needed any makeup, but like most other women, she had a “face” that she would apply daily. She would highlight her eyes, brighten her cheeks, and lengthen her lashes. She was so skilled in her routine that it took her exactly the same amount of time every morning to complete it, and her face always looked exactly the same after she had finished. What was even more impressive to me was how subtle but effective her application was at complementing her already luminous beauty.

      When we were little, my sister and I loved watching our mum go through this routine and couldn’t wait to be old enough to learn how to do it ourselves. And once we were finally old enough – man, we really went for it. Subtlety may have been my mother’s gift, but there was little of that in our technique. There were many times when it would have been challenging to distinguish my sister and me from a pair of peacocks. It took years before we learned to refine our hand СКАЧАТЬ