New Year's Eve Celebrations: Reflections on Ageism in Modern Commentary

Every year, as Chinese New Year draws near, families all over the country gather for New Year’s Eve. It’s a night hemmed with tradition, thick with joy, reunion, and a splash of reflection. At the heart of the evening, you’ll find the grand gala broadcast by CCTV—a spectacle that, for millions of Chinese, has become as essential as dumplings or red envelopes. The show, with its dazzling acts, heart-tugging stories, and wild parade of culture, has more or less carved itself into our collective memory.

But as the years have rolled by, the conversation around this iconic event has started to take on a slightly sour note. Every year, online forums and social media light up with post-show autopsies. Yet, the focus has shifted. Instead of celebrating the performers’ creativity or talent or sheer guts, a weird obsession has crept in: how everyone looks. Especially the actresses—their age, their so-called “condition,” their ability to look young.

One theme pops up again and again: the almost pathological fascination with actresses who manage to “stay young.” The older actresses who somehow defy the clock and still look “youthful” get showered with praise, especially if their looks are seen as “natural” rather than the work of some overzealous plastic surgeon. On the surface, it sounds harmless, even encouraging. But lurking underneath is a judgment: natural aging is undesirable, and a woman’s worth—whether as an actress or simply as a person—gets hitched to her ability to keep looking young.

Meanwhile, the ones who “look their age” or show any trace of getting older? They catch flak for not keeping themselves in “good shape.” Sometimes it’s blunt, sometimes it’s dressed up with polite language, but the message is the same. Aging—a process as natural as breathing—is seen as something to be hidden, conquered, or criticized. And while this pressure falls hardest on women, male actors are starting to get the same treatment, though the standards for them are usually nowhere near as harsh.

If you ask me, this obsession with age—both in entertainment and in society at large—is just another flavor of discrimination. Whether it’s a compliment or a jab, it all comes from the same deep-rooted prejudice: that a person’s value is tied up with their looks and, by extension, how well they fit society’s idea of “youth.”

This mindset does damage on a bunch of levels.

• It cheapens talent and contribution: When we only talk about how actors and actresses look, their hard work, skill, and artistry get lost in the noise. The whole point of a performance is whether it moves or inspires the audience—not whether the performer still looks 25 under stage lights.

• It keeps impossible standards alive: By gushing over the “ageless,” we double down on the idea that aging is a crisis to be avoided at all costs. It puts enormous pressure on women to chase after an unattainable ideal, usually at the expense of their mental and physical health.

• It mirrors broader social discrimination: Showbiz is just society in fast-forward. Judging actors by age only reinforces ageism everywhere else, feeding the message that people are only valuable when they’re young.

As we huddle together for New Year’s Eve, tangled up in all these traditions that bind us, maybe it’s worth taking a beat to think about the values we’re holding onto. The CCTV gala isn’t just a show—it’s a cultural event that brings us together in joy, nostalgia, and hope for what’s next. The best way to honor it? Maybe it’s by turning our attention back to what really makes it special: artistry, creativity, and honest-to-goodness hard work.

And maybe it’s time we see age not as a flaw, but as a badge of experience and wisdom—a testament to having stuck around and kept going. Actors and actresses, like all of us, are just regular people getting older. Their worth shouldn’t be tallied up in wrinkles or gray hair, but in what they pour into their craft and the joy they bring to the crowd.

So, as we step into the new year, here’s to celebrating people as they are—not as some fantasy of youth or age. Here’s to valuing talent, character, and the messy fullness of being human, not the shallow stuff. And here’s to remembering that the magic of New Year’s Eve isn’t perfection, but reunion, tradition, and the stubborn hope that better things are coming.

Happy New Year! May we all greet the coming year with kindness, openness, and a little more appreciation for the richness of every chapter in life.