You Don't Have to Live with Unsightly Eye Bags!

My dermatologist has a shelf full of brochures to leaf through, each one a passive-aggressive insult to the older patient.

I was raised in the pre-sunblock era, which meant that by mid-July every summer I had burned off several layers of skin — first the scorching red, then the flakey peels — and had spent at least a few sleepless nights unable to find a position that didn’t make me feel like I was burning alive.

In the 1970’s, this was considered perfectly normal. A lot of what passed, back then, for socially acceptable parenting would now come under the heading of child abuse. If you see  parents in 2023 letting their children frolic at the beach without covering them in thick layers of sunblock or squeezing them into sun-deflecting Lycra outfits, you can bet that someone nearby is calling 911.

It’s impossible to convince a younger generation, raised on bicycle helmets and SPF 90, that there was a time when if you saw someone with second-degree burns on his or her face and arms, you would say, “Hey, you got some nice color!” And: “That’ll look great in a week when it turns brown.” 

It never turns brown, by the way. What it turns into, eventually, is skin cancer. 

That’s why the generation that grew up before SPF 90 spends one day a year at the dermatologist, getting examined top-to-bottom for moles and unusual nubbins and asymmetrical dots on the skin. It’s a humiliating ritual, standing there in your middle-aged body in your unflattering underwear while a trained doctor studies your creases and crevices looking for trouble, but it’s the price we pay for growing up in the 1970’s, and it’s another thin

Even before the exam begins, there’s the awkward time alone in the little room as you wait for the doctor. My dermatologist has a shelf full of brochures to leaf through, each one a passive-aggressive insult to the older patient. “You Don’t Have to Live with Unsightly Eye Bags,” said one from a company that makes something that will lift and whiten the skin under your eyes. There are pamphlets pitching fillers and bleaches and tucks and a constellation of Botox-like injections. It’s a shelf that says, essentially, You Are An Unsightly Mess. And if you’re in the room long enough, you start to think, Hey, maybe I do need to do something about these lips.

Yesterday, waiting for the doctor, I had enough time to read the entire sales brochure about fillers twice. When the doctor came into the room to begin the exam, I had some questions.

“What do the fillers, like, fill?” I asked, as he peered at my face and neck.

“It’s to replace some of the elasticity and tone that we lose as we age,” he answered. “Like, here, and here, and here, and here.”

With each “here” he pointed to a part of my face that was inadequately supplied with elasticity and tone. I laughed a bit, because I assumed he was joking.

“And here and here,” he added. So, clearly he wasn’t joking.

“Would any of that stuff work on me?” I asked, still pretending this was all a fun and silly exercise and that there was no way I’d ever get my face filled.

My doctor took a step back and looked at me appraisingly. I stood before him in my middle-aged near-nakedness as his eyes assessed the ravages of time.

“Honestly,” he said, “maybe some Botox around the eyes to get rid of those crow’s feet, and some lipo for the facial distention —“

“Facial distention?”

“Jowls. But really, any of this stuff would only bring marginal improvements. And the only person who would notice them is you.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Don’t sound so sad,” my dermatologist said. “I just saved you about fifteen thousand dollars. Now, please lower your underwear.”

I’ll spare you a description of the rest of the exam — you’re welcome, by the way — but I’m happy to report that there were no unusual blotches detected on my skin anywhere. I don’t have to go through that again for another year, unless I suddenly decide to spend $15,000 on marginal improvements to my sags and wrinkles.

Which I don’t think I will, but you never know. For the time being, I’ve avoided one of the biggest drawbacks of a 1970’s childhood — serious sun-related skin damage — but I haven’t licked the biggest, which is that people who were kids in the 1970’s are older now, and it shows.