There was a time not all that long ago (it was earlier this year), when I would have felt incredibly upset if someone told me I looked 30 years old. From my mid-20s onwards, I always wanted people to think I was younger than my biological age, in the same way I always wanted to fit back into the vintage denim miniskirt I thrashed in high school. A twisted glimmer of smugness would shoot through me whenever someone guessed my age as being younger than it actually was; it was the same toxic self-satisfaction I’d feel after shedding a few kilos and shimmying back into that skirt.
Somewhere near the tail end of my 20s, though, people stopped reacting with surprise and saying, “Oh, I thought you were younger than that!“ when I told them my age, and instead just accepted it at face value. At work the other day, I looked in the bathroom mirror and realised it was time to face reality: my visage and my biological age were perfectly in sync. Religious retinol and sunscreen use would only get me so far—sure, they could improve my skin’s quality and health, but they couldn’t eradicate the ever-growing collection of laugh lines, eye bags and deep-set forehead wrinkles. If I wanted to look younger than 30, I’d need to do what so many women in their 20s and 30s were doing, which was cosmetic interventions, namely Botox.
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My feelings around cosmetic interventions have always been complex. I resent that they’ve been normalised to such an extent that choosing not to get interventions, particularly as someone who works in fashion and beauty, is seen as a somewhat radical move. I resent that men in their 20s and 30s aren’t sitting around comparing the results of their baby Botox over a glass of wine with their friends or discussing at length whether they should get under-eye filler. I resent that if I do decide to tweak my face, I’ll likely be trapped in a lifelong cycle of financially draining upkeep. But more than anything, I resent that women aren’t allowed to look their age.
There’s nothing wrong with getting Botox or any other cosmetic procedure per se, but when naturally collagen-filled women in their early 20s are so fearful of looking “old“ that they’re shelling out money on preventative Botox – despite there being no convincing scientific evidence of this even being a thing – it’s perhaps indicative of something happening behind the scenes.
"There’s so much beauty and wisdom that comes with age, and it feels like a shame to prevent it from showing up on our faces"
Earlier this year, I was scrolling Instagram when I came across a post by Australian beauty brand Fluff. Written by Fluff’s founder, Erika Geraerts, it was a remarkably honest account of her feelings about Botox and ageing.
As someone entrenched in the beauty industry, her perspective struck me as unusual. Aside from a few friends and my mum—an ardent, anti-beauty-industry feminist—the number of women I know who openly express their discomfort with how commonplace Botox and cosmetic procedures have become is rapidly dwindling. It’s all well and good to say you’re morally opposed to Botox when you’re yet to see any visible signs of ageing, but I’ve noticed that, for many women, their resolve falters once they clock more than a light dusting of wrinkles. Each year, an ever-increasing number of friends confide in me that they’ve finally bitten the bullet and had some “tweakments“, so it was comforting to read that someone working in the same world as me was also grappling with the varied emotions that choosing to Botox—or not to Botox—can bring up.
It’s an unnerving feeling seeing women you know and love freezing their faces so they remain visually suspended in their mid to late 20s.
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As Erika so eloquently puts it, “I think there’s something wrong when we start losing the concept of what a 35-, 45- or 50-year-oldlooks like, because there’s so few people who haven’t intervened with the natural process of ageing and altered their faces.“
And herein lies my issue with how commonplace cosmetic intervention has become for women—we’re denying ourselves the opportunity to see our faces age naturally. We’re eradicating the laugh lines accrued from too many late nights and wines out with friends, and the forehead lines and crow’s feet that settle after years of animatedly telling stories and expressing joy, anger, surprise and ecstasy. But we’re also stopping new lines from forming, leaving our faces stretched taut and expressionless, a blank canvas unblemished by the act of living.
There’s so much beauty and wisdom that comes with age, and it feels a shame to prevent it from showing up on our faces. When I look in the mirror, I want to see a face that tells the story of a life lived authentically and honestly. But more than anything, I want to see my face looking back at me, with all its beauty and all its imperfections. And while it’s too early to say whether I’ll ever succumb to the temptation of cosmetic intervention, I’d like to at least try and make peace with the inevitable.
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This article originally appeared in Issue 03 of Cosmopolitan Australia. Order your copy and subscribe to future issues here.
