"Mortality is an immutable fact of the human condition, but the desire to cheat death has endured for a very long time."

"According to legend and history, Gilgamesh, Chinese emperors and medieval alchemists all tried to attain immortality. The allure is no less profound today, but the modern potions are somewhat more sophisticated and inherently appealing to a wealthy, techno-centric class of people like [Bryan] Johnson. Mr. Johnson, who lives in Los Angeles, is perhaps the best known of a cadre of scientists and influencers known as 'longevity bros.' They obsessively document their attempts to live cleaner and longer, known cuttingly as 'longevity fixation syndrome.'..."

From "He Said He Was the World’s Healthiest Man. Then Came a Stunning Diagnosis. Bryan Johnson, the longevity guru, wants to live forever. But the big question is why" (NYT gift link).

You can read that essay, but I went on to look for more about that Chinese emperor. I found this: "Trying To Live Forever Killed The Creator Of China's 'Forever Army'/Even the Terracotta Army can’t save you from mercury poisoning" (IFL Science): 

"I, like many a young woman, was once wildly judgmental about plastic surgery. I grew up in the 1990s..."

"... at the bizarre, lonely intersection of second-wave feminism and Manhattan privilege. Many of the girls in my private high school had their breasts enlarged and their noses shrunk. I congratulated myself for not following suit, even though I didn’t have a bump on my nose and I wasn’t flat chested. My mother, the writer Erica Jong, had a whole gestalt back then: pro-sex feminism, which of course meant keeping herself appealing enough for men to want to have sex with her. She worried about her own weight and beauty constantly. Julia Phillips, a successful film producer and writer, once compared her to 'Miss Piggy when her face is in repose'.... My mom was the concubine of more than a few powerful men. To preserve that status, she had a face-lift in her 50s. Many of the feminists who populated my mother’s narrow townhouse — Andrea Dworkin, Betty Friedan and Phyllis Chesler among them — did not believe in molding themselves into something different for men’s delectation. These women rejected the beauty-obsessed power structure that my mother embraced. Instead, they hoped to change that culture by refusing to comply with it...."

Writes Molly Jong-Fast, who got a deep plane face- and neck-lift, in "I’m Not Going to Lie About My Neck" (NYT gift link).

"The gig also made me remember what rockstar fandom, as a young girl, had been: a gateway drug to the opposite sex and sexual attraction in general."

"I remembered chasing Sting (as part of a mob of 14-year-old girls) as he rode with the other members of the Police in an open-top Jeep down Hammersmith Broadway in 1978. I remembered ogling his poster in my bedroom.... Aged 58, I felt as though I was somehow repeating a level on the multi-player game of life that I’d previously completed at 14: sexual and emotional infatuation with a rock star as a prelude and initiation to the real thing...."

From "A moment that changed me: I’d lost my libido – then I saw Richard Ashcroft on stage and it came bursting back/I was nearly 60 and hadn’t had sex in 10 years. And I was fine with that. But seeing the Verve’s former frontman reminded me how much fun it is to fancy someone" (The Guardian).

You don't have to look, and you don't have to look and see anything other than a bodyguard.

Link to Instagram.

"Madonna, who for so long was pushing the boundaries of what women could and should be able to do, has instead become the most powerful avatar of our terror of aging."

"Everything about her appearance signals that she has capitulated to some very punishing beauty standards that insist women’s value lies only in their performance of youth.... After a childhood so influenced by her boldness, and years of being encouraged to express myself unapologetically, I confess I felt a sense of betrayal that she seemed to have finally succumbed to society’s expectations. But as uncomfortable as it can be for me to recognize, I wonder if Madonna isn’t simply once again forcing us to confront some hard truths. That deep down, we are not perhaps as bold or fearless as we’d like to believe ourselves to be. That none of us want to age, or lose our beauty or the power that comes with it. That in the end, we are all vain creatures desperate to hold on to, by any means possible, a shred of youth. Transgression is out; filler is in. Instead of being uniquely, aspirationally free, is she — are we all — trapped?"

Writes Glynnis MacNicol, in "Madonna Has Become an Avatar for Our Fear of Aging" (NYT).

MacNicol is 48. She doesn't really know how we all feel, but I'd just like to say, at age 76, that it certainly isn't youthful to be desperate about clinging to youth. And we're not "all... trapped." If all the singing about expressing yourself has value, it should mean respecting who we really are, not hating it to the point of attacking it with needles and knives.

***

People are talking about Madonna because her new album arrives today: "Madonna’s Confessions II is her best album in 20 years/A celebration of the dance floor that incorporates tributes to her earliest days on New York’s club scene, the queen of pop’s new music is engineered to make you move, or indeed, sweat" (Independent).

"[H]er husband forgot her 50th birthday.... said Ruchi, who asked to use only her first name because she is in the process of negotiating her divorce."

"'You’ve put all these things aside because you’re a mom and you’re taking care of a family,' she said.... 'Then you think: Is that all I am good for? When did I stop being a person?' Menopause lent a kind of fury to Ruchi’s midlife turmoil. 'I actually thought I was crazy, because I was irritated at everything,' she said.... 'There was a time when I was like, "Oh my gosh. How are we going to do this? How is this going to work? What is my family going to say?"... I am a strong person. I am a capable person. My family is very, very, very important to me, but I am more than my kids and my husband. I think I kind of forgot that.'"

From "Older Adults Are No Longer Staying in ‘Empty Shell’ Marriages/Rates of gray divorce have risen sharply over the past few decades — and experts have a few theories as to why" (NYT). That's a gift link because there are so many interesting comments over there.

1. When her husband forgot her birthday, the wife remembered that she had forgotten that she was a person.

2. Do you get much anonymity by limiting the NYT to using only your first name when your first name is as unusual as Ruchi? (I did look it up, and I can see that in India, it is a very common name.)

3. From the anecdotes in the article, I get the impression that when these long-term marriages dissolve, the man finds another woman (to take care of him?) and the woman embraces independence. 

4. From the comments over there: "This article contains the second reference I’ve seen recently to menopause as the cause of women becoming intolerant. I feel like that’s a slippery slope. I offer for consideration the fact that many, many women in our society are expected to carry loads that are unreasonable. I think that might contribute to 'intolerance' more than any hormonal shifts. And I believe such intolerance is valid."

"The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered."

"When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move."

Writes Bob Dylan, answering the NYT's question what are the best things and the worst things about being 80, in "Bob Dylan and Liza Minnelli Already Turned 80. They Have Thoughts for Trump." Yes, Bob Dylan responded to a journalistic query on the occasion of Donald Trump's birthday.

Time doesn't move, but the world moves. Bob also says: "The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it...."

And was time moving in the past? Bob also says: "The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country.... You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would."

ADDED: Based on what I quoted, you might find the headline confusing. Bob didn’t say anything about Trump and what’s Liza Minnelli doing there? But the article actually has a bunch of other celebrities — Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel, Gloria Steinem, and Dionne Warwick. And all of them, including Liza, are shown answering the question “Any advice for the president as he turns 80?” I presume Bob was asked that question too, and he refused to answer. Nevertheless, Bob’s answering of the two questions he did answer – what’s the best thing and what’s the worst thing about turning 80 – is put at the top of the article. So The New York Times wanted to make it about Trump and all the other celebrities went along with that but whatever it is Bob happened to say about aging and time mattered more, and I’m glad The New York Times was able to see that. And thanks to Bob for seeing, once again, that you don’t have to answer the question asked by the one who walks into the room with a pencil in his hand, sees the President of the United States standing naked and asks, How would you advise that man?

Goodbye to Gene Shalit.

I never watched the "Today" show — or any of the other morning news shows — but I knew he was over there, carrying on, sporting a giant mustache, summing up movies with terse wisecracks.

He made it to 100.

"Opening Japan’s doors more widely to foreigners could help offset the declines. But the government has long taken a cautious approach to immigration..."

"... and nationalist politicians and commentators have gained influence recently with a 'Japan First' agenda. 'Japan has now reached a level where this kind of decline is not reversible in the short- or medium-run' said James Raymo, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who studies Japan. 'It simply will not happen in the absence of mass immigration.'... Professor Raymo said the Japanese government’s efforts to promote fertility had 'not really moved the needle.' He said that ultimately Japan could provide lessons for other governments...."

From "How Japan Lost 3 Million People in Five Years" (NYT).

I'd like to hear something of what Japanese experts think about mass immigration as a solution. 

"Today, at 85, [my wife] is lovelier than ever. Her lustrous white hair is so stunning..."

"... that people stop her on the street to remark on it. She has a beauty born of episodes of sorrow intermingled with joy. I have watched her transformation for decades. Her brown eyes are the picture of profound thought, an important idea given form. Her skin, still smooth. Only the lines on the neck betray her age, like delicate narrow paths cut into a desert. I have seen women who have feared these changes and had lots of work done to their faces, whose expressions are frozen in a strange perpetual surprise. I always wondered where their wrinkles went. To a firmament of parts, where old beauty might have reigned but is now a house of discards?"

Writes Roger Rosenblatt, in "My Wife Is 85. She Takes My Breath Away" (NYT)(gift link, so you can read the whole essay).

I'm blogging this as a companion to yesterday's post about Megan McArdle's bemoaning faces ruined by plastic surgery.

Is Rosenblatt's writing bad? Can you understand "a firmament of parts, where old beauty might have reigned but is now a house of discards"? I don't know, but I'm just hoping it's helpful to hear from an old man who sincerely believes his old wife is beautiful.

"I could have tried to adopt, though I think a single gay man would still be right at the back of the queue..."

"... but I remember seeing my nephew for the first time, back in 1997 — just recalling it makes me emotional — and feeling this tug, a real visceral knowing that I was related to this little human being, that we share a gene pool. I wanted the same with my own child. When I reached 50 I thought, ‘It’s now or never,’ and I really started looking into surrogacy seriously.... A couple of friends took a beat or two to respond when I told them about my plans. Another asked, 'Do you really want to be coping with a stroppy teenager when you’re in your seventies?' I think my parents, who are both in their eighties, and sister were concerned that, aged 50-plus, I didn’t realise the enormity of what I was letting myself in for.”

Said Simon Burrell, quoted in "What it’s like to be a single dad (with a child via surrogacy)/The frequency of single fathers having children through surrogacy has tripled. Simon Burrell tells Helen Carroll why he spent £200,000 on becoming one. Plus: I was the UK’s first solo surrogacy father" (London Times).

"There’s always two poles in any movement. There’s this pull toward being post-human, shinier, newer, cloned, etc., the sense that people have elevated the lacquered surface of the machine over the body."

"[And there's this pull toward] I’m real. I think we’re like old stone houses. We have the value of antiquity. If you haven’t tweaked yourself, it’s like you have a working fireplace that’s been going since 1680. We’re authentic.... For all women, there’s that line between choosing to be malleable and pleasing and to conform with the collective norms or refusing it.... No, I’m not playing that game."

Said the 77-year-old French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck, quoted in "Why Fashion Suddenly Loves Older Women/Representation of women of a certain age has never been higher. What’s going on?" (NYT).

The article is by Vanessa Friedman, who continues: "Authenticity is, of course, one of the current buzzwords not just in fashion, but in culture generally. It’s a reflection of the fear that individual style has been lost to the algorithm.... It’s not just influencers and celebrities who have become the vehicles for this version of ageless sameness. It’s political figures, too.... As many MAGA women have embraced the plumped and smoothed 'Mar-a-Lago face,' it has become an expression of a larger social swing toward exaggerated norms and old-fashioned patriarchal gender roles rather than simply a cosmetic fad."

"The New York Times... says a boom of older mothers is coming to reverse low fertility, but the math is against them."

Explains Maibritt Henkel, at The Argument, with some devastating graphs.

"'It shows you that there are people interested in stuff beyond just living and existing,' Bridges said, chatting with fellow residents over Golden Oreos and cranberry juice after her virtual trip to Santorini. 'It’s an escape from reality.'"

From "How Older Adults Are Using V.R. to Counter Social Isolation/New tools tailored for use in senior living communities allow for shared experiences and social bonding" (NYT).

I'm not using a gift link for this one, so you'll just have to picture old people with a big VR device strapped to their face. And imagine many paragraphs puffing the joys of VR — and the joys of travel.

But VR and travel are touted as a means to an end, and the end is the all-important social connection: “When V.R. is done well, you get mentally transported to a place,” said Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.... A few minutes together on a virtual hike or sunset cruise can change a silent dinner to a lively conversation about past travel experiences...."

"He likes to do whatever I want him to do.... He is always looking at me and smiling.... I wanted him to dig, and he just did exactly what I told him to do."

Said Barbara Collins, quoted in "Woman, 96, enlists 150-pound dog to plant spring flowers: She points, he digs/A video of Barbara Collins and Chewy gardening together has amassed millions of views on social media" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can see the pictures of the tiny old woman with the gigantic dogs).

This is another one of those mainstream media reports on what's in social media. Here's Chewy's TikTok,  account, with much better coverage of the old lady and what is her granddaughter's dog.

Sample video:

Trump is wowed by himself.

"Wow!"

ADDED: At the link, which goes to a Trump post at Truth Social, there's video animating a series of photos of Trump, in chronological order, beginning with him as an angelic toddler. We get the sense of Trump through the years, but there is one glaring problem, and it's funny that he chose to share this video anyway. There is only one photo where he is shown with one of his wives, and that wife is Marla Maples.

"Ilsa was only 19 when she went gaga for Lazlo, who was 37. That's how she ended up married before she understood mature adult love..."

"... which she found with Rick. Now Rick is 37 when Yvonne is 19 and she's got a crush on Rick, but he rejects her. Maybe that's not just his wounded coldness. Maybe it's more he's not a sexual predator like Lazlo."

That's a prompt I wrote to Grok, after watching half of "Casablanca" last night while Meade was downstairs watching Purdue lose its "Elite 8" game.

A painting for the elderly and confused.

"He's very sensitive to his surroundings."

"I can be brand new. Whatever."

Betsey Johnson's way of being 83:

"She does not feel self-conscious when she is on stage. It is only when she returns to the wings that she feels a little shy."

I'm reading "Why I’m performing Wagner naked at the Royal Opera aged 81/Illona Linthwaite won’t let being nude in front of 2,200 people stop her from defying the ‘bad press’ given to older women" (London Times).

“The curtain goes up and there’s nothing happening, it’s just me. I thought that was really frightening and then when it happened, I thought, actually, this is brilliant,” she said.

The role is Erda, in "Siegfried."

Erda is usually “frocked her up to the nines” in gossamer gowns, Linthwaite said, but Barrie Kosky, the director, wanted the octogenarian’s body to symbolise nature and remind the audience of their mortality.... 

That's the director's view — an old woman reminds you of death — not the old woman's. She thinks she's there to remind you of life: 

She thinks her performance is something of a political act in a country she views as “spiritually arid” for its lack of empathy towards older people. Ultimately, she wants the audience to look at her and see the future not as a tragedy, but an adventure. She wants people to feel: “Hey, I’m looking forward to 80.”

I asked Grok: "If you saw Erda in 'Siegfried' portrayed by an old woman would she remind you of death or life?" [ADDED: The actual full question was "What views are attributed to the character Erda in 'Siegfried' and if you saw her portrayed by an old woman would she remind you of death or life?"

Answer: