The Price We’re Paying To Look Younger Than Ever

You don’t have to be a cosmetic scientist to realize we’re not aging like we used to.

Madonna recently made waves for her sexy MTV Video Music Awards performance at age 68, fashion designer Vera Wang just went viral for a shockingly youthful makeup-free selfie at 77 (after she broke the internet in a crop top at 70), and 64-year-old actress Jasmine Guy — now reprising her role as Whitley in the Netflix reboot of “A Different World” — took heat for having aged since the original show’s premiere in 1987. 

Whether they were too much, not enough, or not going “gentle into that good night,” none of these women look like the “active seniors” from decades ago. But no one dabbles in the fountain of youth without agreeing to a trade-off. 

“The internet can be brutal to women as we grow older. It asks us to celebrate life while criticizing every sign that we’ve lived it,” Jasmine Guy posted to Instagram. Blink twice if you’ve erased a part of yourself along with a few fine lines.

Will we ever max out on all this looks-maxxing? Mercifully, visionary entrepreneurs in the space are determined to redefine the standard and empower women of every age to embrace their own unique beauty — not someone else’s ideal. 

Nikol Johnson Sanchez — licensed esthetician, model, and founder and CEO of Nikol Beauty — spoke exclusively with The Daily Wire about what it takes to challenge the soon-to-be $600 billion industrial beauty complex and get confident in your own skin. After she let a small shock of white hair grow into a full head of shimmering silver at age 39, she sparked a movement. 

“There was not one person in their 30s that I could find that was gray at all, on Pinterest,” she recalls of 2015. “People were so uncomfortable with my hair, which made me want to do it even more.” Same goes for wrinkles, which she calls “linen lines” on her YouTube channel. “I really love them because it really bothers people. They’re trying to erase all of this, which is so natural and beautiful in my opinion.”

After working in modeling, working in retail cosmetics, and ultimately opening her own spa as an esthetician, she wanted to stop “putting poison on my head” as she navigated fertility. Once she unveiled her glam silver bob on YouTube, Nikol graciously fielded the calls of older clients wanting beauty advice that didn’t fight their aging skin.

“I remember telling my husband, ‘I’m going to take four of my clients — I’ll do a woman in her 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s — and then we’ll be done,’” she half-jokes about her popular tutorial series, “Fierce Beauty.” “‘They’ll be happy and then I don’t have to do it again.’” The video featuring her own mom went viral, and Nikol became the champion for “RED LIPS. GRAY HAIR. ZERO APOLOGIES.” 

She developed her own cosmetics line for mature women to satisfy demand from clients. “It’s not about the makeup,” she says. “It’s about showing up for yourself and feeling good about yourself when these times are a little bit more challenging in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.”

For the most objective measure on aging in the compulsory “Benjamin Button” era, it’s our civic duty to clock one scientific source: “The Golden Girls.” (“You’re old, ya’ sag, get over it,” Sophia Petrillo said on the show.) 

Not only did Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia revel in the passage of time with cheesecake and coffee on the lanai, but they did it in the floral pastel caftans and unironic granny glasses we refuse to consciously uncouple from the Miami leisure set. So what if the actors who played them were all in their 50s and early 60s when the show began? Those white and silver wash-and-wear bobs buttoned them up like old ladies. Old old ladies. 

But we’ll be having none of that nonsense in our mid-2020s. No sensible eyeglass chains or stuffy Shalimar perfume, and God forbid you let go of whatever shreds of vitality you can scrounge together. Actual grandmotherly things have been cute-ified into the cottage fantasies of Gen Z. Modern granfluencers rock the same hair extensions, eyelashes, fillers, and body shapers of trendy 30-somethings, chugging 24/7 energy drinks to rev up for pickleball videos on TikTok.

So how much are we funneling into this backwards rush to the finish line? Participants of one study spent roughly $6,000 a year on injectables, teeth whitening, hair, gym memberships, and supplements. We used to laugh at Martha Stewart’s daily $1,000 luxury beauty routine. But as the queen of homemaking enters her mid-80s with only a blemish on her rap sheet, the beauty complex is banking on age as just a number — with a whole lot of zeros. 

Nikol sees Big Beauty as an extension of other faceless industries that make money off non-solutions for consumers. And counterintuitively for someone with a beauty line, Nikol adopts a less-is-more mentality. “I don’t want you buying more stuff. I want you to be using what you have,” she says.

The saying that beauty’s only skin deep really just scratches the surface. “No skincare product’s going to give you a glow,” Nikol advises. “It comes from the inside. I think that’s what the industry misses about mature women — they just look at them on the outside.” 

Recommending taking care of yourself and moving your body, Nikol says a well-lived life flatters anyone’s face. She’s tried enough Botox to give her the street cred to know what she’s talking about. (For the record, she says, “It’s botulism. Let’s be honest.”) But she believes that beauty can coexist with real life.

“There are women that have gone through a loss of a spouse or have lost their job because of their age, or whatever the case is,” Nikol says of her online community. “Maybe they retired and they have no clue what they’re going to be doing now. If they don’t have a plan, it all starts setting in — the depression, the isolation, the not having community. We want to talk about longevity. It’s not Botox and fillers. It’s really about community, eating well, and your mental health.”  

For anyone who’s curious about which beauty products she does suggest for aging skin, Nikol says, “My eye primer. It’s like a hero product. Your eyeshadow is never going to look like the colors in your palette if you’re just mixing it with the pigmentation on your lids. That’s a game changer for mature women.” She also likes color correctors so “you’re not using as much makeup because you are doing color theory. You want to work hard on your skin so you don’t have to wear that much makeup.” 

Once you have that down, it’s all about you doing you. “If you constantly are looking around and comparing yourself, I don’t think that you’re going to set yourself up for success,” Nikol says. “I think the mindset should be: What do I want? How do I want to feel as I’m moving through each year, or decade? How do I want to show up in this world? What’s going to make me feel good? I think that you have to dig deep and figure out what that is.”

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This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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