Long before the arrival of FaceApp, I remember once hearing someone say that everybody, sometime in their youth— say around when they finished high school—should be given digitally altered images showing how they’ll probably look in ten, twenty, fifty years. That way, this person said, at least they could be prepared. Because most people are in denial about aging, just as they are about dying. Though they see it happening all around them, though the example of parents and grandparents might be right under their nose, they don’t take it in, they don’t really believe it will happen to them. It happens to others, it happens to everyone else, but it won’t happen to them.

But I myself have always thought of this as a blessing. Youth burdened with full knowledge of just how sad and painful aging is I would not call youth at all.

The other day, this happened: I was sitting with some friends at a sidewalk café. A middle-aged woman standing near the curb was speaking into her phone, her voice raised above the street noise. I’m the youngest, we heard her say. From the window of a passing car, a man roared: How can you be the youngest? You look a hundred years old!

An elderly and once very beautiful woman I know had this to say on the subject: In our culture, what you look like is such an important part of who you are and how people treat you. Especially if you’re female. So if you’re good-looking, if you’re a good-looking girl or woman, you get used to a certain level of attention. You get used to admiration—not just from people you know but from strangers, from almost everyone. You get used to compliments, you get used to people wanting you around, wanting to give you things and to do things for you. You get used to inspiring love. If you’re really good-looking and you aren’t mentally ill or obnoxiously conceited or a total dimwit, you get so used to being popular, you get so used to love and admiration that you take it for granted, you don’t even know how privileged you are. Then one day it all disappears. Actually, it happens gradually. You begin to notice certain things. Heads no longer turn when you pass by, people you meet don’t always later remember your face. And this becomes your new life, your strange new life: an ordinary, undesirable person with a common, forgettable face.