To Hell In High Heels

A good-looking young man walked past us. He had dark floppy hair and green eyes. He was tall and well built, probably twenty-five. Rachel caught me gawping at him and shook her head.

‘It’s no use,’ she said. ‘For us the war is over.’

What a horrible thought. Are we supposed to just sit back and passively let old age creep over us? Just lie there until we’re covered in wrinkles and cellulite? I don’t think so.

Absolutely not.

‘Personally, I’d rather go to hell in high heels than to heaven in flat shoes,’ I told Rachel defiantly. ‘You can wear slippers when you’re seventy if you want to, but I shall be wearing Manolo Blahniks. Even if I’m in a wheelchair.’

My sentiments exactly… well it would be if I owned a pair of Manolos. Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading the latest book by Helena Frith Powell, To Hell In High Heels. It’s her “brilliantly funny tale of trying out anti-ageing tricks from botox to yoga, and living to tell the tale.”



Read an excerpt of To Hell in High Heels
Buy the book from amazon.com
Read Helena's other articles, including her amusing Botox Diary.

Vogue UK says no to Botox

Here's an excerpt from UK Vogue editor-in-chief, Alexandra Shulman's piece on cosmetic surgery (and why she's not in a hurry to jump on the surgeon's table) from this article in the The Daily Mail.

Now, though, Botox clinics and laser rejuvenation booths are housed in department stores and pharmacies nationwide. It's as easy to freeze the lines in your face during the lunch hour as it is to pick up a packet of frozen peas. You can fill those nasty naso-labial crevices that drag your face down as simply as you can file your nails.

So, what's the problem? Well, the first problem to me is: What's the point? Or, to turn that on its head: the point is the problem.

Filler is injected into a woman's lips to give a plumper look

The point, I assume, of injecting potions into your face, or peeling off gossamer-fine layers of the epidermis, or moving little bits of fat around under the skin to place them in more flattering areas than where they may have naturally deposited themselves, is, surely, to make yourself look better.

You want to look better because you feel better if you look better. And, as a not insignificant side-effect, you think you are going to look younger. And why do you want to look younger? Because . . . well, we all want to be younger, don't we? Silly question.

We want to look younger because we remember youthful vigour. We want to be sexually attractive, we fear our bosses might think we are getting past it, and, basically, we don't want to be old and physically decaying.

But while we want to look younger, we are emphatically not going to get any younger. And while we can a do a great deal about the kind of clothes we wear, and the food we eat, and the holidays we take, and the colour we paint our bathroom, we can't do a damn thing about the fact that we are going to get older.

So the very thing that we can't avoid happening to us - the fact of the years passing - we refuse to embrace, or at least accept.

Food for thought...

When I was young Mum had a "I want to go grey gracefully" mantra. And, as children sometimes do, I railed against my mother's attitude and swore I would never do that. My attitude is, if something is bugging you and you can fix it safely then why not? I still want to look like myself, but if there is something I can do to reverse the signs of aging that I've managed to accumulate during my time under the aging Australian sun, then I'm going to do it.

"I'm not against plastic surgery, I'm just against discussing it"

Madonna's words...

She's almost 50 and my word she doesn't look it.


Source


What I'd like to know is, what has she had done?

From this pics I'm guessing Restylane under her eyes. She apparently a patient of Dr Brandt who does this procedure...




And from this bruise, I'm taking an uneducated guess at Sculptra in her cheeks...



Here's what the Daily Mail has to say about her bruises...

Like Virgin, Botoxed For The Very First Time...

I’ve only had Botox twice but I’m mighty pleased with the results.


Why I did it
While I didn’t have major lines, the crows feet and the mid-eyebrow cranky line were definitely getting me down. Photos of me smiling revealed crows feet aplenty and, because I’m fond of a good frown, the line between my eyebrows was threatening to take up permanent residence. When people were taking photos of me I’d started to think, “Oooh, better not smile. It makes me look wrinkly.”

I still have an image of an old teacher in my head, a lovely woman, who had perma-wrinkle between her eyebrows regardless of whether she was happy or sad. Very keen to avoid that in the coming years...

Taking baby steps and I decided to tackle just the crows feet first. The cranky wrinkle I can hide behind my fringe. On the morning of my first treatment I bounced out of bed, I was so excited.

Before he got down to business, my doctor told me about his "less is more approach." For first-timers he goes for the minimum dosage. Two weeks later you come back for a review. And, rather than completely immobilise the muscle (and that’s a shout out to Kylie and Nicole! Frozen = Bad) he aims to stop most of the movement, which will pretty much ends the wrinkle-making.

What’s the treatment like?
Simple really.

I lie down in the chair.

My doctor gabs away casually whilst preparing the syringe.

I have a mini-oh-my-god-I’m-getting-toxins-injected-into-my-face moment.

I have a don’t-look/can’t-stop-looking moment with the syringe.

I marvel at how blasé the doctor is about the whole thing.

The doctor swabs my face with disinfectant.

He asks me to smile really hard to locate the muscle next to my eye.

He does three injections on each side, which is one dose of Botox in total for both sides of the face.

To be honest, it kinda hurt. Not unbearable but still pain. Nothing too major though.

Immediately after the treatment
I had red spots at the injection sites that night. I also had a bit of a headache and pain around the injection sites. It’s also recommended that you don’t lie down for four hours after treatment, so blood doesn’t pool in your head, dilute the Botox and make it less effective.

The other thing is, the effect isn’t immediate. Straight afterwards and for the next few days your muscle still works as it always did.

The days following the treatment
The red spots turned into three little bruises all in a row. Not too obvious fortunately. Still, the boyfriend noticed and wondered why I had these bruises on both sides of my face… “Errr…I do? Oh weird… How did that happen? Hmmm…” Anyway, those bruises took about a week to go away, which is a while but I bruise easily I think.

Over the next few days I kept checking whether I could move my muscles… Yes, bummer. Around day 4, just when I was beginning to think I was immune to the powers of Botox, things started to relaaaaaaaaaaaax. Now, it feels exactly the same when I smile, but no more crows feet. Joy!

For the first few weeks I still had the fine lines but they’ve been fading and I’m really really happy with the result. I still look like myself, just without the umbrella spoke effect emanating from my eye sockets.

Cost
$195 in total for both sides

Was it worth it?
Yes!


And the cranky wrinkle?
Two weeks after my first appointment I got Botox between my eyebrows. This time the injections still hurt but I didn’t have so much pain afterwards. There were five injections this time, two above each eyebrow and one in between, equaling one dose.

After the treatment
Ten days on and the stubborn furrow between my brows is fading away. I can also feel that the dent that was there has been filled in. Excellent!

The difference with this treatment is I feel like this has effected my facial movement more. I have more of a sense of weight in between my brows and sometimes my forehead muscles feel a bit tense. It’s a price I’m willing to pay to avoid having a perma-frown in years to come.

Cost
Because I’d already had the previous treatment two weeks before, so it was $150

Was it worth it?
Yes again!

Here's a picture of the facial muscles. I'm guessing the doctor injects into the muscle surrounding the eye, for crows feet and the forehead.


Source: yorku.ca

IPL for beginners

So, I'm starting my first post with my first facial cosmetic treatment - IPL or Intense Pulse Laser treatment. According to dermanetwork.org IPL:

"delivers high intensity pulses of broadband light that is different from the narrow band light of lasers. IPL, which stands for intensed pulsed light, is non-ablative meaning that is does not damage the surface of the skin. The intense light is delivered to the deeper parts of the skin (dermis) and leaves the superficial aspect of the skin (epidermis) untouched."

Different lasers target different issues, for example pigmentation, spider veins or hair follicules.

Why I had IPL
I have very fair skin and what with an outdoorsy childhood, swimming training and the occasional and futile attempt to get a tan during my teens (don't worry that's those days are over! Now it's sunblock morning, noon, and... er... afternoon... for me!) I've managed to clock up plenty of prematurely aging hours under the Australian sun over the past 33 years.

The result? Lots of light brown freckles or sunspots, especially on my cheeks. Made the perfect candidate for IPL!

I was a wee bit nervous, however, having had laser hair removal on my bikini line I thought IPL on my face would be easy-peesy.

I was wrong!

What happens during a treatment
The doctor/nurse holds a handpiece with a clear plastic (??) prism on the end. They cover the treatment area in a cooling gel then place the prism agasint your skin, the machine beeps to indicates it ready, then a flash of hot laser light is released. Hey presto the laser light zaps and heats the dark pigments in your skin.

So this is how it goes.

Beeep. Flash. Zap. Move the handpiece a couple of centimetres.
Beeep. Flash. Zap. Move the handpiece a couple of centimetres.
Beeep. Flash. Zap. Move the handpiece a couple of centimetres.
And and you get the picture, until the entire treatment area is covered.

My doctor told me he tries to push the intensity and do two "passes" or rounds of the face in one treatment. As a result he's able to excellent results for brown pigmentation after one or two treatments. So maybe his treatments are a little more painful than the places that promote doing five or six gentler treatments, and hense the pain.

During the treatment
As I alluded to before, it freaking hurt. I was prepared for the sensation of hot rubber band flicking on my skin.

It was worse.

I was surprised.

After the first pass the doctor offered me gas for the pain. To me, gas doesn't actually reduce pain sensations, it just provides a distraction. Still, it was something to get me through the Beeeeep. Flash. Zap. Pain! routine.

Immediately after the treatment
My face was red and blotchy and hot and painful. The doctor suggested pain relief, which I picked up on the way home.

The good thing was, I also had lots of Milo-like brown spots all over my face! This was all the zapped pigmentation. Hurrah!

Days following treatment
The next few days my face was a little freaky with the dark brown spots. I was a lot more liberal with my foundation application, which went some of the way to making me look less freaky. Still, work colleagues noticed and my brother visiting from out of town thought there was something wrong with me. The things we do...

A week after treatment
The brown spots started flaking off my face. Hurrah again! By about day 10 they were all gone, leaving a lovely fresh clear complexion, not seen by the likes of my reflection since I was 16.

Was it worth it?
The first treatment, totally.

The second treatment, I could have done without because the first treatment worked so well. My doctor has since told me he suggests subsequent treatments to improve the texture of the skin (promote collagen production, reduce pore size etc) rather than to remove pigmentation. I don't really think I experienced any of those benefits but the pigmentation reduction was great.

Cost
$400 for a full face

The deets
My doctor uses IPL Quantum