Cameron Diaz Discusses Longevity

In short longevity means long age. In her second book Diaz takes her reader on a journey explaining who we are as people and as a society when it comes to the standards of beauty and age.

I ran across this book somehow while I was just web surfing and I started to read the free excerpt and I was hooked with the new perspective this book had to offer. Now, the idea isn't quite new. Everyone says be happy with what you have all of the time. But, no one really explains why you should appreciate what you have, or even how to appreciate what you have.

I did a little research and learned that it was Eleanor Roosevelt that said, “Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.”

But Diaz starts off her novel with this message loud and clear. That beauty could be found in any stage of life be it your awkward years or your elderly years. Grace does not age. There is an elegance and a refinement of movement that Diaz wants us to recognize in not only ourselves but each other in this book.

Believe it or not Cameron Diaz is 43 and according to wikipedia she'll be 44 this summer. In her book she describes why it's an excellent time to be alive and that we should be celebrating the accomplishments of modern medicine rather than worrying about how to cover up every single grey hair or wrinkle.

When she was approaching 40 a great deal of her interviews consisted of questions about her age. In her book she describes the kinds of questions that was posed to her.

“They were saying, ‘Aren’t you afraid that the death of your career is imminent because you don’t look 25 anymore?'”

Hearing this (since I have her book on audiobook) made me think of the science fiction movie Logan's Run. Set in a dystopian future where people are killed once they reach 30 years old. When I was 28 I told my father I was certain it was 40. He only laughed and said no that it was only wishful thinking on my part. Ha!

So it's everywhere, once you hit 30 you're old and you should stop enjoying live life the way young people do. (I suppose is the stereotypical idea)

But we're living in an age where everything is delayed now, because death is now delayed. In the 1900s life expectancy, according to UC Berkley, men weren't expected to live past 46 for women 48.

I can't image that at 30 years old more than half of my life is over and that I have maybe 20 years left.

I love this book because she goes into detail so that you can really appreciate and get a sense of just how much has change. While reading this book I was able to take a step back and look at the aggregate of man kind.

According to Infoplease the life expectancy for people living today is now their 80s.

"AROUND MY FORTIETH BIRTHDAY, I started thinking about what it means to age. It is a fundamentally human ques­tion, one we all start to consider at some point. None of us is immune to the passage of time, and one day, when you realize that life just keeps moving forward and there really is no going back—the wondering begins. Poets write poems about it and musicians write songs about it and scientists design experiments to understand it. All of us humans wonder what will happen to us when we get older. I had been living in this body of mine for more than four decades when I started thinking about the changes that might be coming down the road. I have experienced a lot of changes throughout my lifetime, of course, but I found myself unable to stop thinking about how the decades ahead were going to reveal some even more drastic changes—and how I didn’t really understand the aging process, or what it would mean for me. "

Everyone should read this book, it's not just for women struggling with body issues. It's really for everyone.

For young women about to step into womanhood, for women reaching middle age, women who have passed middle age but I've also found that this book as more. Just as Cameron is speaking to women of all of these ages she could just as easily be speaking to fathers of daughters. This book can help men appreciate their wives more, help them understand their daughters more.

It's personal, it's educational, it's even scientific. This book is also empowering, knowing that you can control the art and science of getting older. You can control the way you want to age - somewhat.