Jennifer Horgan: Our obsession with youth is a way of denying death, but we should embrace it

Irish Examiner

20-06-2025

Did you ever enter a contest to see who could lift a corpse? No? Not recently?
Maybe you wrestled over a corpse then, or played cards, handing the deceased their own hand. No? Not that one either.
Ok, last one - did you ever hide under a corpse, shaking it to scare the incoming mourners - especially the kids. No?
Well, don't worry. It's not you, it's me. In truth, these questions would only make sense to someone who lived in Ireland 100 years ago.
We called them wake games and right up until the middle of the last century, these farewells to our loved ones were packed full of mischief, merriment, and matchmaking.
It was a time for divine madness, drinking and kissing and the presence of mná caointe, keening women, who wailed and sang, lamenting our dead.
To give you more of a flavour, one game involved someone donning a collar and sitting in a corner to 'hear confessions'. The 'priest' would act horrified, imposing an embarrassing and severe penance, which had to be performed for all to see and enjoy.
Things got so bad that in 1927, the Synod of Maynooth 'forbade absolutely' unseemly and lewd behaviour around corpses. It all sounds a bit mad, doesn't it? Sex and death – all deeply Freudian.
If you've spent time over in England, you'll recognise that we've retained some of our ancestors' customs. Plenty of English people find our open coffin and open-door policies around death unsettling. Their upper lip seems to only get stiffer around stiffs.
Nonetheless, compared with 1925, Irish deaths in 2025 have become sober and sanitised affairs. Children are generally left out.
Last week, I went to a Seed talk with Marian Ó Tuama, a Psychotherapist, who warned that children are better off seeing dead bodies early, particularly the bodies of people they don't love.
At the removals and funerals I've most recently attended, children were kept at home unless a part of the immediate family. Bereaved children no longer see their peers in their grief. It happens away from their everyday realities.
And as for us adults, far from engaging in revelry, we stick to a very specific script. Lining up in perfectly managed and curated funeral homes we say we are 'Sorry for your loss' on repeat. Hands are held and hands are dropped, and then out the door we go again.
What's crazier? Playing games over a corpse or paying doctors and dentists to give Botox injections?
Death has become a sober, serious, adult-only affair. The madness of grief has drained from our communities, our practices. Stories and tributes are typed online rather than shared in person, in letters, or in our chat.
But before we start to think we're evolving towards sophistication, let me address our ancestors with questions us modern urbanites understand.
Tell me, great-grandmother Horgan, did you ever inject poison into your face? No, seriously, did you ever inject your face with something that would make you look younger than you are?
Ancestor of 100 years ago, your doctor or your dentist – did they ever put something in your face, Botox or fillers, to make you appear younger than you are?
What's crazier? Playing games over a corpse or paying doctors and dentists to give Botox injections?
Or put it another way – What's crazier? Accepting death as an inherent part of living and marking it as a whole community, or denying we age and die at all.
What's more concerning, the cheeky sneaky Botox or the obvious Botox?
According to a Women's Health and Wellbeing Survey, commissioned by the Irish Examiner, and involving over 1,000 women, 'one in 10 women states their GP offers cosmetic treatments and one in seven that their dentist does'.
What do you think? Might the people lining up for Botox be better off drinking and having sex around corpses? I know it sounds facetious but I'm deadly (pardon the pun) serious. We used to mix sex and death freely. Now we accentuate one and deny the other.
I'm convinced that our ancestors were onto something – that it's healthier to put death front and centre, to literally place the corpse at the centre of the party. Increasingly, we hide death away, pretending it is not coming closer and closer the longer we live.
Another study, this time carried out by University College London last year, found anxiety was the most reported problem among 511 Botox patients surveyed, with 85 people claiming they suffered it after the jab. I'm eager to know if they also suffered it before the jab.
A woman explaining why she gets Botox said to me recently that she does it to look less tired. The thing is – she is tired. Her body and face are tired from being a body and a face for over 40 years. It's a tiredness that's different from a phase, a mood, an episode.
Generational differences
The differences in attitudes to aging and dying are not only between us and our ancestors, however. Changes are also taking place between generations.
I chatted with a beautician this week about who comes into her salon.
'There's a huge difference between the attitudes of younger and older women when it comes to Botox and fillers,' she says.
Younger women want to look like they've had work done.
'They're proud of it. It's a sign of success – a badge of honour, that they can look like they've had their lips done.'
I must assume that the same goes for their foreheads, shined and buffed and glistening.
We all know, I mean rationally, that human skin has never been so shiny. We see it happening in front of us - these young women becoming the shiny plastic dolls they once played with as children.
Older women, and men, want to look natural, just not as tired.
What does that tell us about how we're evolving? What's more concerning, the cheeky sneaky Botox or the obvious Botox?
Is it possible we're moving from mild death anxiety (where on some level we know it's nonsense) to absolute death denial – where to look good, or cool, or current, is to look like something unhuman, something like AI.
There is no suggestion that Madonna is trying to look her age anymore. File photo:)
Madonna's face is a good example – there is no suggestion that she is trying to look her age anymore. She's not even trying to look like a person anymore. She has a mask on, and it's completely unrelated to her biography.
The Irish Examiner Women's Health and Wellbeing Survey surprised me in one thing. It suggests that fewer women, fewer of our peers, are getting Botox than we think.
The survey reveals that 10% of the women interviewed had Botox, 6% fillers and 12% either treatment. However, most women (45%) believe that 'most women my age have undergone some form of cosmetic treatment'.
I wonder how interviewees interpreted the words 'cosmetic treatment'.
Death anxiety
Read between the lines, if the lines are still there, and it may be true that a lot of women are getting cosmetic treatments, just not Botox or fillers.
A lot of people, particularly people with money, are going for less invasive services like skin peeling, micro-needling and laser resurfacing. I suppose you might call it death anxiety light, or death anxiety for beginners. But it's still death anxiety, right?
You know, looking your best, looking less tired – covering up or reversing excessive living to stay sexy.
And I'll pre-empt the comments about dying your hair if I may.
Death anxiety is not something new. We have always tried to look younger. The earliest documented use of hair dye can be traced to Ancient Egypt, over 4,000 years ago.
It's just that our death anxiety is ramping up, and it's not necessarily good for us.
For anyone who cares, corpse-me is all for a party. Feel free to enjoy a smooch and a tickle around me; give me an old shake too if you fancy. I won't be looking. And if I am – I'm smiling.