Anna is an advertising exec in LA. She's been very successful over the years, but she's at the point where she's concentrated on one client, CosCom, a cosmetics company catering to the older woman, and when that client decides they want to go with someone younger, Anna is forced to face a scary future.
She felt numb. And it wasn’t just shock. It was fear. Her car. Her house. Like hell. The Mercedes lease was up in just months; the car belonged to the dealership. . . .
Forget the car; she’d be lucky to find a way to keep the house. Anna had refinanced whenever the rates tumbled; even so, she had precious little equity in it because she saw refis as a way of giving herself bonuses. . . All that hard work— was she going to end up with nothing but a closetful of pricey clothes and some travel photos?
[she approached a friend, an agent for a headhunter] ". . . no corporation’s going to look at you twice. And even the first time, they won’t really be looking at you, they’ll be looking through you. Maybe if you tried a headhunter in New York, something might— emphasis on might happen.”
“Oh, come on.” Anna set down her cup with a vehemence that surprised her. “It can’t be impossible!”
“Look, even most men who snag great corporate jobs come from corporate— or they get a job in-house with a client. So your only hope would be Coscom. Seriously, Anna, it’s different for women. And not just in La-La Land.”
[confronted with homelessness, she jumps at the chance that next comes her way.]
She meets Pierre Barton, a man with a revolutionary product, an offer and a confidentiality agreement:
“All right, I’ll sign. I’ve got my own pen, thanks. Or do I have to sign in blood?” she added jokingly. Looking up as she signed, she caught him studying her in a way that made her wonder fleetingly if she’d agreed too soon. Then she gave a little laugh and handed the agreement to him. She wasn’t Faust, he wasn’t the devil, and all she’d agreed to was an expense-paid trip to Paris and a big fat wad of money. Her future was looking up.
[Pierre's product promises to make women look and be younger.]
It’s not just my mother I’m thinking of. It’s every woman who’s tried to find work once she’s mature or who’s felt invisible or devalued after her fortieth birthday. If you ask me, that’s even more important.”
“Women like me?” she murmured.
“Yes, women like you, Anna. Women who are equal to their male counterparts and their younger competitors in every way. Women who are underpaid, ignored, told, ‘Sorry, nothing for you.’ We can’t quickly change how people think, but we can change how women look.” . . .
[with all products on the market today, . . .] "She knows it can’t do more than make her look good for her age and only until she washes her face. What if she looked just as good or even better without makeup?”
“Don’t lasers do that?”
Barton shook his head. “Laser is still a quasi-surgical procedure. And it has drawbacks: it’s expensive, not successful at rejuvenating the neck, needs to be repeated, and causes thinning or whitening of the skin over time. What if looking thirty years younger was as simple as moisturizing?” . . .
". . . retinol is what you Americans would call the minor leagues. I’m talking about wiping decades off a woman’s skin, not a year or two. . . .
The formula— we’ll call it Youngskin for now— stimulates elastin and collagen regeneration, as well as the fat- growth layer, at about a hundred- to- one ratio compared to retinol.” . . .
. . . this is— what?— a skincare product from Coscom or a pharmaceutical from Barton?”
“You know about cosmeceuticals , I take it? Skincare meets medicine?”
[anna is whisked off to a secure location in the isolated countryside, where 57 will become 25; she's incognito and going by Lisa.. Of course, it's not that simple, in order to pull off the deception she also needs coaches:]
The next five days were completely filled with what seemed to be classes: Movement, Speech, Grooming, Attitude, Lifestyle.
Anna slipped into a pair of red stiletto heels, the highest she’d worn for at least two decades, and tentatively made her way across the industrial-carpeted floor. . . .
“No, no, no. That simply won’t do,” Gilda pronounced when Anna had crossed the room and returned. “You look like a female impersonator who’s spent his entire life in a pair of motorcycle boots, pet. Do it again, but like this.” . . .
Anna was equally unstable walking, running, even just standing. By the time the lesson had finished, she’d decided she’d just have to insist on being a hot young thing in flats. Plenty of younger women everywhere wore ballet slippers and Doc Martens and UGGs.
[next was Speech with Sam]
By the end of the hour, Anna was speaking faster and dropping more g ’s at the ends of words, which didn’t seem like all that big a deal. She thought she sounded young enough until Sam told her, “Your voice is too low and mellow, Lisa. That comes with maturity. Let’s see if we can push it up an octave. . . "
She was only slightly offended by being told even her voice was old. . .
She enjoyed every minute of Speech. Later, sitting at the desk in her room jotting down some reminders for her diary, she realized she’d enjoyed Movement, too, even if those shoes from hell had played their part. It was like being an acting student again or in summer stock. She thought it would be fun playing someone else. Totally, she added to herself— youthfully. Totes .
[then grooming with Fleur:]
" . . . no one under forty except rich Russians has time for all that blond tortoiseshelling you’ve got anymore.. . . I’d say medium auburn with flame and yellow stripes.”
“Yellow? You mean blond?”
Fleur cracked her gum and looked at Anna as if she’d just stepped out of a spaceship that had landed on the lawn. “Yellow, Lisa. As in, yellow . I’ll bring some shots on my iPad tomorrow, to give you an idea. ’Cause that style’s got to go, too. I’d pick short and spiky if I were you. Your face is kinda long for long hair. Don’t wanna look all Celine Dion.” . . .
“You’ll be doing your own makeup? When we meet tomorrow, wear makeup— I mean, wear it all— and I’ll critique it for you,” she ordered.
“I am wearing it all.”
That got her an eye roll. “What do you do, go into a store and ask for whatever they have in drab? I can give you some tips to spice it up.”
And so it went until, by the end of the hour, Anna felt as if everything about her had been shouting “Old broad coming through!” for years.
[Attitude with Meredith]
She went through a list of what she seemed to think were cutting-edge words, but most of them— like hottie and hookup were nothing new.
“The thing is, Meredith, I don’t need to sound like a rock star, just like a younger woman.” “You should learn the words before deciding you aren’t going to use them,” was the tart reply. She ordered Anna to go to urbandictionary.com and to follow young actors’ Twitter feeds in order to learn ten new expressions to use every day.
[And Leo-Nardo for Language]
“Imma give you a list of shit to do on the net tonight, and then tomorrow, we do iTunes ’n’ all,” he said. . . .you gotta learn the hot covers, what a girl with her shit together would be into. Yeah? What music do you listen to now? House? Acid? Hip- hop? Rap?”
She shrugged. “You won’t be impressed. Sixties and seventies rock. Jazz. Opera. A little pop.” Trying not to sound mocking, she added, “ That shit.”
Leo-Nardo burst out laughing. “Man, we got our work cut out for us this week. You probably love that Celine Dion, too, huh?” He collapsed in laughter, so amused that Anna didn’t bother to tell him she didn’t like Celine Dion. Or that she did not in any way whatsoever— resemble her.
[that evening, as required by her contract, she recorded in her journal:]
The “me” that my coaches seem determined to turn out doesn’t sound at all like me, the real me, and only slightly like me when I was in my twenties. I wonder if I’ll feel like a fraud or if the Youngskin product will make me actually feel youthful again?
One thing today’s sessions helped me see is that youth is about more than skin, though that is clearly of vital importance and will be to all Youngskin users.
But age is a state of mind that runs the gamut from fashion to catchphrases to books and music and movies. The older coaches don’t seem all that different from me— I imagine Gilda, Sam, and Meredith spend their free time pretty much as I would. (By the way, Meredith doesn’t have a clue how anyone of any other age actually speaks; she’s useless.) But the younger ones, Fleur and Leo-Nardo, inhabit a different universe.
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