The Perfect Age

Susan Sarandon / iStock

I’LL BE HONEST: 70 is not my perfect age. In fact, it is nobody’s perfect age except for actress Susan Sarandon, who is also 70 and is currently starring in a TV commercial for an anti-aging face cream in which she coos, “I’m at my perfect age,” peeking through flowing diaphanous fabric like that damn scarf that killed Isadora Duncan and gazing flirtatiously up into the camera — up is always the best angle for old people — behind God knows how many forgiving camera filters.

Susan is certainly no stranger to plastic surgery, having gone under the knife many times. As an unabashed fan, she has had obvious breast enhancement, liposuction under the eyes and chin, and proclaims she still has “much more surgery planned” to maintain and enhance her beauty. This is perfection? I would like to go on record saying that the need for surgery, elective or otherwise, is no hallmark of perfection. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The perfect age is when you bound out of bed limber as a ballerina instead of like the Tin Man in need of a lube job, when you don’t need one pill to get your insides working smoothly and then another one to make them stop working too smoothly, and you don’t know the names of any surgeons at all except the ones on Grey’s Anatomy. The perfect age is when you can forget your body entirely and just enjoy the day, flitting around weightlessly like a hummingbird. And, honestly, that does not happen at 70, despite how rich you are.

Make no mistake, at 70 you can still be happy, you can still look good, and you can still enjoy life. But it is not by any stretch of any imagination the perfect age except for maybe Susan Sarandon, especially on those days when she cashes those big fat checks from L’Oréal.

— Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.