“Can She Survive My $2,000,000 Anti-Aging Routine?” reads the title of a YouTube video capturing Tolo’s initial trial of the protocol last year. If Johnson is known as “the most measured man in human history”, Tolo has become a close second.
Tolo (right) with Bryan Johnson.
Part of the protocol involves broadband light therapy, a facial treatment Tolo apparently needs because, Blueprint’s team advises, her skin’s age is that of a 65-year-old due to UV spots from the years she spent under the Australian sun.
But how does she feel about anti-ageing when women are often valued for our proximity – or synthetic proximity via cosmetic assistance – to youth? Well, she insists the regime is not an aesthetic pursuit, as Blueprint requires the individual to surrender all decisions, regardless of the external results. Before she started she had decided: “I’m going to let the algorithm run and we’ll see what it ends up with.”
“You remove yourself from feeling like you have ownership over your own body in a way because you’re just doing measurement, intervention, measurement, intervention, measurement, intervention,” she says.
The ultimate goal, Tolo says, is for no one to need Blueprint any more because “our society has been rearranged in a way where it just naturally takes care of us”. But browsing the Blueprint website, past olive oil (Johnson consumes three tablespoons of a day) for $47 and “Don’t Die” hoodies, it’s hard not to wonder if dietary supplements and relentless self-monitoring are the first steps towards a society in which we’re all looking out for each other’s longevity.
Some scientists have expressed scepticism about Blueprint’s potential to delay or – if it happens upon some breakthrough – eventually “reverse” ageing, but concede that movement and diet generally have correlations with longevity. Not only does the protocol appear unattainable to the average person – who might not have resources to insulate themselves from the inevitable uncertainty of modern life and maintain something so structured – but unenviable.
Tolo hopes for a time when society is rearranged to help take care of us.Credit: Magdalena Wosinska
I ask Tolo about the idea of living, not just staying a sentient being on earth for a bit longer but living, with all the spontaneity and novelty necessary to create our most cherished memories. In other words, is an extended life worth more than what many people would consider a more expansive one?
“I am a person of sacrifice… Prior to Blueprint my life was full of plenty of sacrifices,” she says, describing the 2am emails she sent while working in fashion and the holidays she forfeited. Now the sacrifices involve a level of consistency. “Do you go out and have the 12 margaritas, as you mentioned, or do you get to sleep and have a good night’s sleep and have a high [heart rate variability] for the next morning so that you feel fantastic and ready to tackle the day?”
In TV series Fleabag, the protagonist delivers a quintessentially Millennial monologue in which she begs a priest to tell her what to like, hate, vote for, believe in and eat every morning: “Why am I still scared? So just tell me what to do.”
At a time when many people feel impotent in the face of ecological and political uncertainty, and overwhelmed by infinite choice under capitalism, Tolo appears as a far more relatable proxy than Johnson with a prescription for a life well lived. “I represent more of the average person”, she says of herself.
“I just want to relax,” Tolo says tearfully in a YouTube clip, filmed during her first days in the program, “but the data is what keeps me going.”
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