“The crucial task of old age is balance: keeping just well enough, just brave enough, just gay and interested and starkly honest enough to remain a sentient human being.” - unknown
At first glance this really doesn't bode well for my old age...
The "this" in question being the results of a study which show that an older woman who applies make-up each morning has better posture and (most importantly) falls over less often than one who doesn't. Now as someone who has already ended up in the emergency room twice thanks to loss-of-consciousness-induced-falls...and, moreover, wears barely any make-up...it would appear that I'm relegated to a future spent hurtling towards the ground unless I change my ways and start applying slap on a daily basis with the intensity of a bricklayer mixing cement.
Thankfully a second glance shows that the study was led by L'Oreal's research communications director. Now I realize that I can be a tad cynical at times but I can't help but feel they may be a little biased...
Not to mention that correlation is not causation--it seems to me that women who are still applying makeup are likely to be the women who are well enough to. (In other words, a third variable--health--determines both makeup wearing and falls.)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for this article, quite effective piece of writing.
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