Baby boomers may not have a corner on the marketplace for an urgent need to stay youthful but they certainly have set a very high standard for making a virtual avalanche of products and services to attend to that need. The search to look young in baby boomers has ended in an explosion of profits in the cosmetic and cosmetic surgery markets. It’s not difficult to criticise the need of baby boomers to want to see themselves as fresh as straightforward self-love. Nonetheless it goes far deeper than that.
It does not take a large amount of research or research to see that baby boomers grounded their identities in the youth movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Before the boomer generation exploded like a generational volcano, there actually was no youth movement. But in the 1960s, when youth culture almost usurped American and indeed world culture, it all changed for baby boomers and that change wasn’t truly reversed.
The culture of that time that now seems a long time ago, was one of the devotion of youth and icons such as Barbie And Friends of course. That need to put age on a pedestal and worship everything about being young has infiltrated the culture even as the boomer generation moved into middle age and now is on the edge of making the largest retirement generation ever.
Only some of the youth worship that is easy to document in baby boomers is just about looking sexy and dreading the physical changes of growing older. Some of what boomer’s adore about the idea of youth has to do with the idealism and the dedication to causes that isn’t unusual in youngsters. The need to change the world and to be a force to make mankind better was a part of what made the new youth culture in the 1960s so unique. And because those values are laudable, we actually can’t totally condemn the need by baby boomers to stay fresh.
So the quest to stay young regularly reveals itself in cosmetic tries to look young. You can just about understand the appeal. We all like to look great. But the genuine source of youth is not a tight butt and abs and smooth, wrinkle free skin. The phrase “you are as young as you’re feeling” is sometimes scoffed at by baby boomers as a cheap cop out. And it can be used to have a reason to behave younger than you are and maybe want to socialise with younger folk in a tasteless way. But it could also reflect that an inner youthfulness which is fueled by a youthful outlook on life and a basic policy of good health and exercise will keep anyone spy and vital well into their senior years.
It is when baby boomers mix those components of “inner youthfulness” with their cosmetic attempts to stay young that they really do retain much of their youth beyond what their years would report. Everyone has met an elderly woman or man who is so energetic and fun that they cause you to feel older than they are. The flicker in the eye, the interest about everything life has to offer and that anticipation and idealism that you routinely associate with kids is really provoking when it is being voiced by an older citizen.
This is the genuine youth movement the baby boomer generation is pioneering and home based business entrepreneurs are making money from. It is more than dying the hair or using Botox and wrinkle creams. It is about being powerful inspirations to the youth coming up that they do not have to throw in the towel on their dreams and that their idealism and excitement in living can flourish regardless of what age they are. And if that is the result of the baby boomer generation, it is a fine ethic for them to leave behind for future generations to enjoy.
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