DO NOT AGE (June 29, 2014)
Thus the message in an advertisement on a huge television screen on the rooftop of a building on the main Zagreb square. I could not but stare at the ad. “In an era of youth-supremacy,” I read, “Dr. Brandt offers thirty years of skin-changing science by cracking the code of aging.” It took me a while to realize that the ad is about a cream. A wide selection of time-reversing cream products, that is. “Do not age,” I kept repeating the command to myself as I walked home. When I got there, I googled the good doctor at once. Dr. Frederic Brandt with offices in Coral Gables, Florida, and New York City, to be a bit more precise. He styles himself as a celebrity dermatologist. What is more, he sees himself as both a medical doctor and an artist, for he sculpts the skins of those who buy his products. But his photographic portrait on his website takes the prize. Staring intently into the camera, he looks exactly like his clients—well off ladies in their sixties and seventies. As far as advertisements go, this is a definite winner. “Follow me,” one can almost hear him thinking, “do not age!”