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.