In 2025, Sanex ran a TV ad for shower gel that showed a Black woman’s cracked, itchy skin as the “before” and a white woman’s smooth, hydrated skin as the “after”. The tagline promised that “relief could be as simple as a shower”.

We have been chasing youth for centuries. From legends of the fountain of youth to billion-pound industries built on the promise of turning back time, the obsession never went away. It only changed form. Today, it is bottled in “anti-ageing” creams, filtered selfies, and airbrushed campaigns that teach us that growing older is a problem to fix.