A Fear of Wrinkles

When do you become old? Is it a gradual process that creeps up on you until you realise one day that you're no longer intimidated walking past building sites because your presence doesn't even register? Or that no matter how much you try to relax your face, some lines just don't go away? Perhaps it's a sudden thing, the first time you realise you've become invisible, or someone tries to help you across the road. (Does anyone still do this?)

In statistical terms being old is defined as being over 65, the age at which the Office of National Statistics classifies you as "ageing". It tells us that 16% of the population are over this marker. At that age most people will have retired, of their own volition or not. One day you're vital, the next you're a statistic. But one fact remains. We're scared of old people. They show us what we will become and it terrifies us. We're afraid of their experience, we become fidgety at their tales of the past.

This week an ad campaign was launched using, by any accounting, a very old woman: she is 96. The company behind it has garnered enough publicity so I shan't give it any more, but let's codename it "Pigeon". Much fuss has been made of the use a wrinkly old woman. (Blanch if you will at such a description but that's why she was picked - do you know what she's done with her life? No, neither do I, that would have been the interesting bit.) Whether cynical marketing ploy - if so tremendously successful - or because Pigeon really, really cares has been hotly debated. But in the end none of it really matters. Perhaps it will change perceptions by allowing more "old people" to have a voice, a face. Perhaps.

Of course not everyone is scared of old people. Individually we can be quite kind and interested. I adore my 70-plus parents and am ever interested in their advice. If they get fobbed off by doctors or shop assistants, I can turn quite fierce. I sorely miss my grandparents, not least for the wonderful tales that linked me to the past. I'm sure you have lots of similar "my best friend's an old person too" anecdotes. But as a society, a workplace, how we seem to loathe the old.

I remember, on another newspaper, one of the wisest men being "pensioned" off. The reason given was that he was over 65 (he had been for some time) but in reality his experience scared the new editor and showed up her lack of knowledge. How much she might have learned: he was the internet long before the worldwide web. But the workplace seldom takes notice: only 17% of employees stay in work after the age of 65 compared to 40% of self-employed people.

Pigeon's emphasis on "the real beauty" of older people is not a revolutionary concept, but it becomes one of total luxury when you consider that more than half a million pensioners in this country are undernourished and more than 2 million live in poverty. More British old people die of cold than anywhere else in Europe.

Some years ago, the Lancet told the story of a doctor who gave a shoulder rub to an old man. "You know," the old man said, "that feels wonderful. We old people never get touched." The report also noted that "after years of wanting to be touched but not receiving touch, many older folk become uncommunicative concerning their need for it". Half of people aged 75 or over live alone.

France is looking at a "new" concept (actually, the way it used to be) of building nursing homes in the same complexes as creches and nurseries. Young and old will mix, the old providing attention and calm, the young keeping the elders active and learning that old people are just older people.

Pigeon claims its campaign is to empower the older woman. (What about the men?) But it missed something really important. The face of its campaign may be 96, but the job of picturing her went to a trendy and relatively young (38) photographer. What about the superb photographer Jane Bown - nearly 80 - or Tessa Traeger, no stranger to photographing wrinklies and herself in her 60s? Alas I fear this would have been a step too far for advertising, as it involves really thinking outside the box. In pretending that age is not a hindrance, that beauty is more than skin deep, Pigeon's campaign has only shown the opposite.