To Botox or not to Botox
TO have or not to have?
That is the question facing every woman over 30 and, I can attest, if the answer is not to have you’ll be accused of having it anyway or recommended that you do.
I’ve been told that Botox would do wonders for me and in the same week lambasted for having too much.
Both helpful hints were from people I didn’t know, the latter from a Sky News viewer who lashed out on the feedback email that I should ‘lay off the Botox’ because I’ve apparently ‘had so much that it’s beyond funny.’
Which is quite funny because I haven’t had any.
I wonder if I should take it as a compliment.
Days later, a beautician who I pop into for an eyelash tint says I won’t know myself with a few goes here (she touches the frown lines hard earned on my forehead), and here (the smile lines the result of so many joyful moments).
So far I’ve resisted. But the pressure is on. Who hasn’t tried pulling their face back with their fingers admiring the results in front of the mirror? Or studying the visages of their friends wondering whose is real?
We have spots that aren’t freckles, lines that weren’t there before, and we’ve started spending a fortune on tiny pots of cream, dedicated ones for day and night, buying their outlandish claims that they’ll reverse ageing when we know nothing does.
Except perhaps Botox, Collagen, Restalyne, Juvederm, liposuction, an eyelid lift, boob job, nose job, or surgery to hoik your face behind your ears.
We espouse that beauty comes from within and other feminist ideals but it’s unconvincing while fantasising about ironing the creases under your eyes.
Despite your total abhorrence and moral opposition to cosmetic enhancement you start asking around.
How much for this and that? Does it hurt? Is it obvious? Problem is no one’s ‘fessing up. ‘How would I know?’ they shrug, sipping green tea, a frozen expression on their smooth brow.
Why the shame when artificial enhancement is almost customary? When it’s a given that beautiful people these days are not necessarily genetically blessed but just surgically inclined. The rate we’re going, the world will soon divide in two: The haves and have nots. Those with new faces and those with real ones.
The smooth and the crinkled. Forty is already the new 30 and Madonna looks younger than when she was Like a Virgin. ‘She looks her age’ no longer means anything because our reference points distort with every nip and tuck.
We’re moving into the age of the ageless where everyone’s in their mid 30s. Forever.
It makes you nostalgic for yesteryear when nature took its course. My nanna looked like a nanna with soft wrinkles and skin like paper.
But 67 now is taut and tight with a permanent expression of surprise. Men say they only need look at a mother to see how the daughter will look in 30 years. These days he’d be lucky to tell them apart.
Except cosmetic surgery is not yet at a point where you can’t tell someone’s had it. It’s not so much looking younger but looking like you’ve spent half your salary attempting to look younger.
Which may be why there are signs of a backlash against surgical enhancement with facelifts falling off the top five cosmetic treatments in the US.
Helen Mirren, noticeably untucked, is a feted beauty above her `procedure happy’ cohorts. But let’s not get excited.
It doesn’t mean a return to cucumber masks and early nights. The scalpel may be out but non invasive fillers are all the rage. Maintenance as opposed to desperate clinging to youth.
Or there’s an easier way to stall the signs of getting on: with studies showing the greatest influence on facial ageing is depression, adding 3.5 years to a woman’s perceived age, at the very least we should enjoy the process.