Woman’s Amazing Anti-Ageist Rant Goes Viral
Can a salesperson go too far when pushing products? (Photo: Getty Images)
Annick Robinson, of Montreal, says she had a run-in with an age-shaming salesperson at the airport last week, and she’s sharing her frustration on Facebook because apparently telling women they look old is a sales strategy.
“So. I was kind of a brat yesterday. And I don’t regret it one bit,” her now-viral post begins.
Robinson writes that she was heading to her gate at the Calgary, Alberta, airport when she was “suckered in” by a salesman offering a free bar of soap. (Can’t blame her for that!) The conversation, as she shared it, went on from there, and it wasn’t pretty.
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Man: “Your skin is so natural looking, you aren’t wearing any makeup, right?”
Me: “Um, nooooo?”
Man: “Let me guess your age…” Proceeds to pull out a number 12 years younger than I am.
Me: “I look my age and that’s OK actually.”
Man: [Unsure how to handle that] “Let me show you our face serum, because if you aren’t careful to maintain your skin now, these wrinkles on your face will get much deeper, by 45, creams won’t help anymore.”
Me: “What’s wrong with a woman looking 40?”
Man: “Well let’s talk about the bags under your eyes, and smile lines, my eye cream could improve those in 15 minutes.”
Me: “What’s wrong with my eyes? I have a miracle baby at home and haven’t slept in 2 years, so if I have bags I am grateful to have them, and my husband and I laugh a lot. Those are his fault. He loves how I look … I don’t think I need your cream.”
Man: [nervously] “They may be manageable now, but by 50, it’s too late to correct sagging skin and deep wrinkles, unless you act now, only surgery can correct those.”
Me: “What’s wrong again with a woman aging? You know, my husband and I can’t wait to grow old together, we talk about it all the time, how we’ll be this funny wrinkled old couple. My husband is going to age too, we all are. It’s kind of how life works.”
Man: [glancing nervously at other customers in the store who are listening in] “Wait, if it’s the price that’s an issue, I can offer you our special this week, all three creams for $199 — that’s cheaper than Botox!”
Me: “I look fine now, and when I’m 45 I will look fine, and when I’m 50 I will look fine, because there is nothing wrong with a woman aging. Old age is a privilege denied to many, and I don’t appreciate you marketing youth instead of your products, and denigrating aging women as a sales tactic. Thank you, but I don’t want or need your cream.”
“I was so horrified by the normalcy of his sales pitch, and the sales ringing up at his cash [register], that I took a picture of that wrinkled baggy face he was selling to, right on the spot.
“This is the face my children and my husband love. I think I’ll keep it.”
Photo: Facebook/Annick Rbsn
The Calgary airport has only one store stocked with antiaging products, called ERA Ageless. Yahoo Beauty reached out to the business via phone and email but has not yet received a reply.
Robinson posted an update on Thursday to clarify a few points, writing that her original post was not about being makeup-free or about a pushy salesperson, but “about a billion dollar industry that depends on women hating themselves.”
She went on to address the impossible-to-live-up-to beauty standards in our society, saying, “It’s hard-wired into us from the cradle that our main value as a woman is beauty, and a standard of beauty that we can never actually attain. Even our supermodels get photoshopped.”
“Flip the script when you hear it,” she wrote, encouraging others to question standards that don’t make sense. “Every time. Until it loses its power. The next generation needs you to change the game.”
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