By Andrea Goto
My best friend dating all the way back to the 6th grade came to visit me last week, right about the time FaceApp garnered national attention—including our own. We’ve spend the past three decades watching one another age, so what would happen when we sped up time?
At first, side-aching laughter.
“Nooooooooo!” we squealed and doubled over with laughter as we watched our 42-year-old mugs transform into ghostly, witch-like raisins. My 13-year-old daughter heard us laughing and wanted in on the action. And while her image wasn’t as pruned, I’m pretty sure she was scarred by the fact that her head somehow expanded with age.
“Will my head really be that big?” she asked in horror.
“FaceApp doesn’t lie,” I teased, ensuring that she’d attempt to bind her head for the next decade.
All the buzz around FaceApp says that it’s part of a Russian conspiracy to steal our personal information. Maybe. But I think it’s more likely that the health and beauty industry is behind it. After all, that’s who’s really going to benefit. (Go ahead, Russia, steal the $5 in my bank account.) Because while my best friend and I rolled with laughter, inside, we couldn’t deny the immediate panic we felt—because, what if?
Later that evening, my best friend and I went shopping and found ourselves (not by accident) in the beauty aisle, frantically rummaging through anti-aging products like our lives—well, at least our faces—depended on it.
We read labels, calling out “Retinol!” “Antioxidants!” and “Hylauronic acid!” like we’d struck gold. My daughter, bored and perhaps a little bit embarrassed, asked, “What is wrong with you guys?”
“You don’t know what it’s like!” I replied, causing a woman behind me to laugh knowingly. “All you have to worry about is a big head!” (Okay, that was a low blow, but FaceApp had worked me into a bad place.)
My friend and I left with handfuls of moisturizers, serums, oils and elixirs, all promising to fight the wrinkle in time, and smeared them into our midlife faces before bed. The next morning, my skin admittedly felt incredible supple.
“It’s like you went back in time,” my friend gushed first thing in the morning.
“I know, right?”
Of course, we didn’t go back in time, nor did our faces appear that way. We did, however, pay our skin more attention than we ever had in the past—something I should’ve started a long time ago. And I have to admit that it felt really good to take some extra time and care.
At the end of the day, FaceApp brought us laughter, faced us with our fears of aging, and ultimately motivated us to do better for ourselves (and maybe stole my identity, but that’s beside the point). And for that, I’m grateful.
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