The 6th Anti-Ageing Skin Care Conference held in London on June 5-6, 2018 was focused on the theme ‘Skin Health and Skin Aging’. The first edition organized in 2008 had been introduced by a dermatologist, Pr Christopher Griffiths. He came back this year… 10 years older, and with a very innovative vision of how skin aging prevention should be approached today.
These 10 more years of work on this subject led Pr Griffiths to start his presentation looking further back into the past, focusing on the perception of youth and aging in a 16th century painting: The Fountain of Youth, by Lucas Cranach L’Ancien.
‘The fountain is the middle of the painting’, he commented. ‘On its left, old women undress themselves to dive in the water, and then get out of it, completely rejuvenated, on the right. So far, so good… One question, though: where are the old men? Well, here they are: they are waiting for these newly young women, in the woods in the top right-hand corner, in the bushes in the bottom right-hand corner, or in the tent, in the middle, slightly on the right, to do… whatever your imagination suggests!’
‘Of course, today, no one still believes old men get younger by mating with young women… or do they?’ he added, moving on to the second slide: a picture of Donald and Melania Trump!
After this introduction topped with this oh-so British humour, which could not but delight the audience, Pr Griffiths got to the heart of the matter.
