Along with the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, the research of the elixir of life has always been for the alchemists, one of the main objectives, but
nowadays, to ensure eternal youth, the man first tried to get the immunity to every illness and fight aging mostly pharmacologically.
Over the centuries, life expectancy has undergone a huge increase primarily due to the medicine that has given his massive contribution, and to date, how many can claim to have arrived at their age without all of this? Probably a very small percentage.
These phenomena have not only amplified the expectation for a longer life but also for a renewed and invigorated aesthetic appearance and in the last decade we are witnessing a phenomenon in which more and more men and women of a certain age affirm their beauty, trying in truth, to approximate their physical appearance to the aesthetic of adolescence, rather than valorizing those belonging to the third age.
The phenomenon of beauty pageants for adults over forty years has recently undergone a huge increase in participants, but other sociological phenomena, amplified from the domain of web in the communication, have played their part.
With due epochal and cultural differentiations, we are witnessing the brilliant prediction of Warhol, the famous 15 minutes of fame for everyone, and the web
in fact, embodies this.
The figure of the MILF, depopulated in the porn market as a result of the revenge of adult women, expressed by an economic independence, the control
that the woman claims and by the undeniable desire to continue to be sexy and desirable again.
The “phenomenon MILF” is therefore the result of a more complex social change, which has something to do with the new role of women, the rise of the
age at which they have children. But also men is following this phenomenon and the number of bodybuilders between 40 and 60 years competing all over the world is in fact increasing, and nearly three times higher than fifteen or twenty years ago.
The beauty contests registered in the world are 18,000 and this is a businness for over an hundred million euros per year, among sponsors, and
television rights.
And children also compete.
Despite the parade of Children still creates conflicting perceptions in the population, also this trend continues.
Why I’m talking about this? Because this phenomenon is the result of a cultural drift, in which the spasmodic desire of parents for beauty is projected over their children, and through this, adults enjoy the retroactivity generated from the consent collected
from their sons.
In addiction, observing certain competitions seems that they are moms and dads to having fun more, pushing their children to participate in contests where
beauty is the only criterion to excel over others. Children, however, are induced to prevail over the other children by a criterion that only affects their aesthetic side.
In order to build an anthropological analysis of this phenomenon I’ve documented three types of beauty contests, those for adult women over the
forties and fifties, the bodybuilding competitions for athletes, men and women over the age of fifty and beauty contests for the children.
Now the question is, where the beauty is going?
