Svelte the Aged

Cruising Borough High Street yesterday I found myself in front of a poster advertising something to do with elderly health care (the exact details of this advert's purpose escape me, this is why I should carry a notepad). Smiling happily out of their plexiglass panel was an elderly couple, locked in recreation of what the Tango must have looked like 40 years ago - saucy, I know. While the fact that I haven't the foggiest idea as to the intention of the poster presumably negates its purpose, it did set me thinking on (that most well-worn of topics) elderly modeling.

Now, I can't claim to know the slightest thing about the fashion world, much less how one goes about a career as a model (not having the jaw-line I so desired for a place in the industry), but what baffles me most is the concept of the 'elderly model'. There must be such a thing; look at all those posters for healthcare, BUPA television commercials and photographs on pamphlets about living with arthritis - they're everywhere! So where is the source for these photogenic octogenarians? Are they professionals? If so, have they worked a long-life in modeling and now need to change their niche market slightly due to wrinkles and receding hairlines?

Alternatively, are the poster-"children" of these campaigns just volunteers? People that genuinely use whatever product it is that they're hocking, and were coerced by a few hundred quid into putting their face on a bus shelter?

Whatever the source for these aging mannequins, what exactly are the assessment criteria for a good mature model? Is it attractiveness? Now, I fear I may be swimming into dangerous waters here, but can one seriously assure me that many of these veterans of the school of life are assessed on their looks? I mean, obviously it's still a factor, I wouldn't be so offensive and ignorant as to say, older people can't be attractive, but surely after, say, 65, this becomes less substantial a bargaining chip as time goes by? You can call me agist, but you can't have failed to notice that the older people get the more alike they become? In this case, is their selection based on how stereotypically old they look? How 'nice' they look? How much a viewer may or may not want to adopt them as a grandparent?

Am I being totally ridiculous? Perhaps. The fact is that any resentful overtones that may be gleaned from this post are simply projections of my own fears. For someone that, at only 22, feels himself racing ever-closer to retirement years and subsequently (I can only imagine my children to be as callous as I) a home, yet still has not even the whiff of a career, girlfriend or solid future of any sort, the possibility that I may end up still taking jobs advertising hemorrhoid cream and denture fixative when friends are building model boats or taking that trip around the world they always dreamed of, is a nightmare made inescapable by a well-placed Telecare affiche or Werther's Original signboard.