![]() Then, mere days into reporting this story, I got into a horrible accident. Despite her hope that her generation would overturn ageism, technological progress has, in many cases, created more problems for aging users than it has solved. Nearly 40 years after the publication of Disguised, in other words, the Mother of Empathy is much closer to the grandmotherly age she once pretended to be. ![]() The result, once carefully adhered to Moore’s face and topped with makeup, was uncanny-as if Moore had stepped into a time machine, or fallen under a spell. She created jowls, eye bags, and saggy neck skin. Within a few days, the makeup artist crafted custom flesh-toned prosthetic pieces for Moore. “I could make you look very old,” Kelly replied. “And tell me if you could make me look old.” Moore’s face was round, without high cheekbones-the perfect canvas for an ersatz wizening. Kelly, it turned out, had a specific talent: aging up actors. Not long after, Moore attended a party where she met Barbara Kelly, a makeup artist for a new sketch comedy show called Saturday Night Live. She left the meeting frustrated, with a feeling she couldn’t shake: If she could understand what it was like to be old, she could develop better products. But, she thought, who was she to advocate on behalf of elderly consumers? Moore had never struggled to open anything. Moore fumed at the injustice, to say nothing of the lost business opportunity. ![]() “Pattie,” a senior colleague told her, “we don’t design for those people.” The firm’s target users were middle-aged male professionals. She suggested creating a fridge door that unlatched with ease. At a planning meeting one afternoon, Moore mentioned that, growing up, she’d seen her arthritic grandmother struggle to open refrigerators. Moore held a hand to her cheek, astonished and thrilled at the transformation.īack then-this was the spring of 1979-Moore was a young industrial designer living in New York City and working at Raymond Loewy Associates, the famous designer of everything from NASA’s Skylab space station to home appliances. Crow’s feet clustered at her eyes, her back hunched, and silver hair gathered around her face. When Patricia Moore was 26, she looked in the mirror and saw an 85-year-old woman.
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