"Anti-Aging" Skincare Has a Problem, and It Starts With the Name

The anti-aging skincare category does exactly what it says: it positions aging as something to fight. The issue is that aging is not a disease, a mistake, or a problem that can be solved; it is what happens to a face over the course of a full life. The industry has spent decades monetising the fear of that process — first by selling correction to older women, then by expanding into prevention, selling the same fear to women in their twenties before anything has visibly changed. The result is a category that tells women their faces are wrong at every stage: change too fast and you need correction; don't act quickly enough and you need prevention.

A handful of brands have been quietly working against that logic for years, and the difference between them and the rest of the market is worth paying attention to.

Youth And Beauty, Then And Now

For most of the late 20th century, anti-aging skincare sold fear and aspiration in roughly equal measure. The fear was of becoming visibly older; the aspiration was a smoother, firmer version of the face, often lighter-skinned in markets where skin tone was also being sold as something to improve. L'Oréal's Skin Perfect Anti-Aging + Whitening Cream, marketed in Asian markets in the 2010s, is a useful example of where that combination leads: a single product pairing anti-aging with skin-lightening as equally desirable outcomes, suggesting the customer should want neither the face she currently had nor the face she would eventually develop.

Then the industry found a more expansive play. Rather than waiting for women to show visible signs of aging before selling them the solution, prevention moved the starting point earlier. Skincare brands now market to consumers in their early twenties — and in some cases teenagers — with products framed around preventive anti-aging. The pitch is that starting early makes the difference. What it does in practice is introduce the fear of aging to people who have not yet experienced it and ask them to spend money fighting a battle that has not yet started.

This is the logic at its most revealing. It is not simply that older faces are positioned as problems to fix; it is that any face that changes over time at all is positioned as a project. Women are not supposed to age, and they are also not supposed to have aged yet, and the category profits from both versions of the same insecurity at the same time.

The Anti-Aging Skincare Brands That Decided Otherwise

Dove's Pro Age campaign, launched in 2007, was an early and major break from this model. Rather than featuring younger models to sell anti-aging products to older women — a move the category had more or less perfected — Dove used women aged 50 and above and presented their skin as the intended result, not the obstacle. The slogan "beauty has no age limit" was doing something specific: it treated the natural appearance of an older face as something the product was designed to complement, not correct. Those are not the same brief.

Olay's #FaceAnything campaign in the late 2010s positioned its Regenerist range around confidence and facing life rather than reversing it, with a broader range of ages, skin tones, and body types shown not as a diversity statement but as the expected range of the brand's customers. The proposition was that the product was for who the customer actually was, not for a version of her she was supposed to work toward.

CeraVe has removed the aspiration angle more structurally. The brand, which grew significantly through the late 2010s and 2020s, positions its products around dermatological function: hydration, barrier support, and skin health at any age. Its Skin Renewing range talks about boosting radiance. There is no suggestion that the goal is younger-looking skin, because younger-looking skin is not the goal. The goal is skin that works well, which is the same goal at 25 and at 65.

In stark contrast, take Lancôme's Rénergie, which describes itself as a "secret weapon" against aging and promises "visibly younger" results. Unlike CeraVe — which successfully avoided reinforcing beauty ideals — Rénergie attempts to sell aspiration by describing what the customer is supposed to look like at the end. Instead, CeraVe describes what the product does for the skin

The New Status Quo

The shift from "anti-aging" to "pro-age" and "longevity" is partly a marketing evolution and partly a genuine change in the underlying premise. The brands that have changed in a meaningful way are not just using different language — they are promoting a healthier relationship with our faces while reshaping the culture and discussion around beauty and aging.

Dove’s Real Beauty campaign helped it become one of Unilever’s most trusted and top-performing personal care lines, and its influence made it a benchmark for competing brands. Olay remained a high-performing skincare brand and its scientific positioning reinforced credibility in its anti-aging products. CeraVe became an international skincare staple — particularly with Gen Z consumers — often praised for being “no nonsense” skincare.

It is only fair then to say that a “pro age” label is more than simply a marketing trend, but a resounding psychological truth that longevity isn’t about reversing age anymore, but about the right to age gracefully with confidence, health, and good quality of life.

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Index:MH sets measurable standards for how the beauty and fashion industry affects consumer mental health. To find out more about our work, visit indexmh.org.