The claims of British babe Shimmi Munshi that she stopped aging in her 20s are a bit of a stretch. Yes, she looks good. Really good. She looks younger than her 41 years. But “stopped aging”? I don’t think so. I know women who are in their early forties and don’t look even close to that age. I could introduce you to a few. Heck, I happen to be married to one. They aren’t gifted with some supernatural dose of immortality. They just take care of themselves and were lucky enough to have good genetics. “As my friends began aging, I seemed to go in the opposite direction, but I’ve no idea why,” Munshi says. “I feel like the female version of Peter Pan–the girl who never grew up.” Mmmm’kay.
This did get me to thinking, though. Everybody knows that one of the things about vampires is that they don’t age, but I’m not certain at what point this became an integral part of the mythos. In the Dark Ages, vampires were moldering corpses, looking not at all as good as they did in their earthly prime. I expect the concept of a person’s dying young, meaning that they would “never have to grow old”–I’m sure you’ve heard this said before regarding someone who died prematurely–is the source for the vampire’s perpetual youth. It calls for more research. I’ll get back to you on it.