Burnt in Bonfire of Vanities

Burnt in Bonfire of Vanities
The West Australian
Ros Thomas
Published: Saturday July 7 2012
Section: Opinion

You know you’re on a long haul flight when the trolley dolly wakes you at 3am to ask if you’d like the chicken curry or the braised pork. I know I’m not allowed to call her a trolley dolly anymore. It’s politically incorrect. But on this occasion, it was cosmetically correct. Actually, it was probably anatomically correct.

I think she was aiming for a look somewhere between Bambi and Barbie, but she’d inadvertently ended up closer to a Cabbage Patch doll – misshapen, puffy and tending towards scary. That stewardess had more plastic in her face than in all the little bottles I had in my toiletry bag. Her forehead was so shiny it could have shown the way to the emergency exits. I couldn’t tell from her wide-eyed expression if she was looking at me with disdain, despair or delight, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her, for all the wrong reasons. (Though I hasten to add she did seem very nice.)

What is going on with women and Botox? In some suburbs you’re sliding scarily towards the minority if you’re of a certain age and you’re not tinkering and tampering with your face like it’s a home economics project. There’s a veritable sewing kit of now common procedures – from Botox needles, to fillers, plumpers, and threading – (no, I don’t know what half of them are either, except I’m reliably informed the latter is de rigeur for shaping your eyebrows and taking years off).

I’ve no doubt I’m as insecure as the next woman. It’s taken me 44 years to accept that my face is an agreeable enough reflection of who I am. Yes, I’d like to wind back the clock to that first flush of nubile, peachy-skinned womanhood, but I was too bloody insecure and self conscious to think any man who cast me a sideways glance then, was seeing anything but the flaws that loomed large in the mirror before me each morning. The closest I’ve come to cosmetic surgery was a week of going to bed aged fourteen with the tip of my Roman nose taped firmly to my cheeks with bandaids, in the vain hope it would emerge by morning as a cute little upturned button. All I got was a nasty rash.

That said, I refuse to look down my nose at anyone who chooses Botox over Oil of Olay. But I am fascinated. And increasingly so. Because Botox is as trendy now as skinny jeans and ballet flats. (Or am I passé already?) It’s no longer a strange quirk of celebrity pandering, but a full blown obsession with the middle classes. (At least those rich enough to afford it.) The young flight attendants I got chatting to on a later flight told me they already felt the pressure to start on Botox, given their industry was still obsessing over its appearance. And they said a medical clinic at Melbourne airport had just started offering Botox for hosties needing top-ups. Obsessed indeed.

In a hip cafe in an affluent suburb last week, I stood in line be hind a 50-something woman. She could only just move her mouth to order the fish of the day (no wonder with that trout pout) and she barely stood out in relief against the wood panelling of the counter. (I couldn’t tell who had the better tan, but I think the wood panelling had a slightly more natural stain)

I’m certain she was smart and funny and kind, but I’m sad to say she looked ridiculous and eerily disconcerting. Had she left her eyes and lips alone, she would have been an attractive older woman. Now she was being tittered at behind whispering hands and eyebrows cocked above menus.

Why do women still think the only way to be measured is by their looks? Haven’t we come far enough to realise there are attributes far more attractive on offer? And is it men who are prodding this fixation with the superficial? I could be mistaken but I don’t think so. No man I know wants the object of his affection to be the object of public derision. Perhaps it’s our never-ending quest to remain forever young? But I think many women do it for other women. In some thinly-veiled attempt to become the envy of other women. The sisterhood has turned in on itself. We have been gazumped by our own.

Women who go overboard on botox (and its family of facial additives) start to look like they’re related. Have you noticed? They all have the oddly blank faces, and the fishy lips and the strange puckering around the eyes. They look like some new breed of Stepford wife. A homogenised underbelly of the middle classes with hair extensions and terracotta tans.

I’m sure anyone reading this column who has partaken of the artificial elixir of youth will be affronted by my thoughts on this subject, or worse, be mighty peeved. She will argue that she is happy with her decision and even happier with the results. And she didn’t go under the knife or submit to the needle out of any insecure vanities. She just wanted to give herself a helping hand and feel all the better for it, inside and out. And I’ll be so glad to hear her say that. Because I would like to be wrong. And very possibly am.

Why then, the secrecy? Why, if everyone’s doing it, will no one admit to it? I think we’re lying to ourselves, let alone each other, if we think anyone buys the story that we look this refreshed because we’ve just had a holiday in Provence. You can’t rewind the clock that much. We’d all like to look good for our age, not a decade shy of it.

I admire the women content to justify their wrinkles as character lines used to illustrate a life well lived, and yet often I hear this as an act of defence, that when put on the spot, they somehow need to explain why they haven’t turned to Botox to stave off the inevitable.

Would I like to try it? Yes, I would. Do I know what I’m missing? No. I don’t. For one simple reason – I’m too scared. Petrified of having it go wrong. I know I would rather have the flaws time is giving me than the ones some cosmetic wizard accidentally created for me.

Does that make me a coward? Absolutely. But I’m okay with that. I don’t feel morally superior being au naturel and I don’t feel physically inferior. But I do worry Botox is going to star as the centrepiece of some sort of moral battleground – that those who don’t use it will use it to take the high ground over the those who don’t. Is that fair? God knows I could do with a helping hand – why bother with all those skin firming creams and potions that promise miracles you never see when Botox delivers straight up? The pursuit of ageless beauty is forcefully marketed these days and I think even young women are feeling under siege. But what are we saying to the next generation of women if we’re not prepared to age (dis)gracefully ourselves? That they must hang onto their looks at all costs? That the minute they see the first sign posts of a wrinkle they must move immediately to erase it, lest anyone notice? There are few windows into the failures of cosmetic medicine. They are well hidden, unless like me, you notice them everywhere.

In the meantime, I’ll try not to obsess over my reflection in front of my small daughter. I’ll try not to let on about my insecurities in front of my two boys either, in case they decide it’s okay to judge women by their looks alone. And I’ll pray this fixation with trying to look permanently younger is just a passing fancy we’ll all grow out of. And I’ll have the chicken curry please.