by Erica Gingerich

It was a Skype call last week that made me realize why there are almost no old people in movies or TV shows about the future. Why? Because as we all learned as kids from The Jetsons, in the future, everyone would be using video phones, Casio watches, and G-type-main-sequence-star-solar-powered Jumbotrons to communicate across the vastness of outer space.

And let’s just be brutally honest here, shall we? Nobody over the age of about 12 besides Captain Jean-Luc Picard looks good on those big viewscreens they like to use on Starfleet control bridges. Nobody. Not in movies about the future, and not in our video-conferencing, webchatting present.

Whether it be FaceTime, Skype or Chatroulette, by the time you’ve reached 30 at the very latest, it’s near impossible to mask the damage wrought by that bottle of Malbec you killed all by yourself and chased with two double whiskeys the previous evening. There’s apparently an East Coast plastic surgeon these days specializing in “FaceTime Facelifts” to help freshen up “mature” faces so they’re webcam-ready and palatable to all those tween digital natives who think wrinkles, nose hair, and, like, full-time jobs are groooossss! But who has time between webchats for plastic surgery, right?

Okay: so back to that shocking Skype call last week. It was with a fresh-faced, zaftig 20-something HR person who was calling me about an opening at her company. She was a pleasant-albeit-rather-average-looking girl, but she had youth on her side. I didn’t. Her cheeks were full and rosy—in the little video thumbnail of myself at the corner of the screen, my cheekbones loomed sharp and harsh. She leaned into the camera (a-ha, so that’s what Sheryl Sandberg really meant?). I leaned back as far as I could. I leaned left. I leaned right. I did the hokey pokey and I turned myself around in the swivel chair. I turned the desk lamp on. I turned it off. I lowered my office chair. Then I raised it again. Nothing helped.

In that little thumbnail of myself, I swear I was the spitting image of Ricardo Montalbán in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. And with great chagrin, I realized that if I were in a movie about the future, I’d already be dead. Either “retired” by an android-assassinating cop played by Harrison Ford, or “renewed” in a “Carrousel ceremony” that looked like the ultimate bad LSD trip.

Or I’d be playing the part of the old black lady oracle character from the “Matrix.”

Sure—Khaaaaaan exuded a menacing, ageless sort of intergalactic Latino sexuality in that tight-fitting, futuristic Jazzercise bodysuit of his that played up all that great man cleavage he had going on. And that, like, totally awesome! 1982-post-punk spiky coif he sported in the movie—the one that looked like Barry Manilow’s and Billy Idol’s hairdos had danced the merengue and cha cha with themselves and made a lovechild? It was a modified shag meant to evoke a sort of macho, youthful insouciance. Even after all the battle scenes, exploding dilithium crystals, space junk schrapnel, and hand-to-hand combat with Kirk, there was not a hair out of place on Khan’s luxuriant, Rogaine-worthy mane.

At age 62, “Mr. Roarke” was still undoubtedly one of the most handsome and virile men to have ever graced the silver screen. Or planet Earth, for that matter.

But every time he appeared on the USS Enterprise’s big flat-screen monitor—the kind you could get for a few hundred bucks at Best Buy nowadays—and threatened Kirk and his crew with total annihilation, you couldn’t help but notice that he had wrinkles beneath that cosmic-ray-induced permatan of his. He EVEN had décolleté wrinkles, like the rich bitches of a certain age sunbathing on the French Riviera with their hunky Balkan boys. Khan may have been a “genetically superior tyrant,” but he nevertheless could have done with some Botox and Restylane fillers to plump out those “11s” frownies and gaunt, geriatric cheeks of his.

So as I was having my own “Wrath of Khan” webcam moment last week, I realized that it was time to take control of the situation. If I already look this old and wrinkled now on webchats at the tender age of 40-something, I can only shudder to think of just how off-putting I’ll be to younger chat partners someday when Verizon starts offering holocalls in 2035.

“Hey, grandson, does this hologram make me look fat?”

So just in time for Valentine’s Day 2014, The Stoneslide Corrective has launched the Internet Beauty (lighting) Initiative. St. Valentine, are you listening? We’re ready for our close-ups!

The SC Internet Beauty Initiative is for people over 30 who have been too scared ’til now to turn on their webcams when they Skype. Or as Barbra Streisand sang, it’s for people who love people over 30, but just don’t want to have to suffer the eyestrain of all the wrinkles and accelerated decrepitude when they do a quick Facetime call with an older loved one.

How to solve the problem? Sure, there are fancy smartphone apps like Chromic that allow you to add funky filters when you take videos or pix with your smartphone. And we’re sure there are apps out there somewhere—or in development somewhere—that will allow webchatters to alter their appearance for the better in real time. Maybe they give you Miley Cyrus’ peachy complexion with Beyonce’s bodacious butt and Marilyn’s sly smile.

We’re also anxiously awaiting the app version of those 1980s shopping mall “Glam Shot” studios that would give you wind-machine tresses and the glow of a gazillion jean jacket rhinestones illuminating your face.

But for the rest of us old farts who have finally ditched our dumbphones—well, to put it delicately—HOW much time do we really have to wait around for these technological advances before we shuffle off this mortal coil? I mean—we’re over 30. Knocking on death’s door. We need something that we can use NOW. Today.

That’s why the SC Internet Beauty team is reviving a then-state-of-the-art technology from the 1970s, and transforming it into a bold new design idea for electronics that Steve Jobs definitely definitely definitely should have thought of when he made the first iPhone, but didn’t.

Remember those makeup cases you could get at JCPenny’s or Woolworth’s that came with the pop-up makeup mirrors with lights? Back in the glory days of disco and women’s lib, those mirrors had three settings you could imagine Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda using to get ready for work at 8:15 a.m. in the movie 9 to 5. Three settings that said it all about a modern woman’s life and beauty needs in 1979: natural daylight, office fluorescent, evening.

We seem to remember that they even made a special Bianca Jagger Studio 54 version with settings for: