Do I or don’t I? This is the precipice upon which I teeter; deciding whether to let nature take its course or begin the kind of subtle aesthetic treatments that will tighten, lift and smooth my face.
There is a space between doing nothing and doing something, of course, but as I vacillate between whether to bite the bullet and go for it or step away from the hypodermic needle, it does feel as though I am at a crossroads and that once a path is chosen, there is no going back.
At the time of writing, I am a 46-year-old woman. A 46-year-old woman showing an appropriate amount of ‘wear and tear’ for someone who didn’t take SPF application seriously until my 20s but who has been diligently taking her makeup off at night and using active ingredients for many years now.
It’s the little things I’ve noticed that indicate my face is changing, softening and sagging. I have retired my former trademark winged eyeliner because it is instantly smudged by my drooping upper lids. My neck and jaw are no longer taut and in profile I can see their softness clearly. My forehead is lined, even at rest, and my under-eyes are a combination of hollow, sunken and dark.
My hesitation isn’t because I think there’s anything wrong with facial aesthetics, quite the opposite. I’ve been in the beauty industry for over 20 years and I know how effective, safe - if performed by a qualified, licensed and insured practitioner - and beautiful they can be.
My reason for stalling is three-fold…
Firstly, I think it’s easy to hyper-focus on the face when one begins to think about anything in the realm of anti-ageing. Then, once you’re focused on, say, your lips or under-eyes, everything else blurs into the background. Secondly, once I start, I think it’ll be difficult to stop and one has to consider the long-term financial commitment being made when you have that first treatment. Thirdly, do I want to remove myself from the experience of seeing myself age, which is, let’s face it, an entirely natural and appropriate part of life?
Let’s start with this idea that you can hyper-focus on one area. When I had breast reduction surgery in 2019, it was an easy decision. My breasts were large, pendulous and out of proportion and I was a great candidate for some surgical ‘tidying up’. The lesson I learned afterwards, when my lifted, perky boobs looked out of place on a body that was overweight - at the time obese by BMI standards - was that I had become so focused on breast reduction being a cure-all that I had completely lost perspective on the bigger picture.
Even though I don’t regret my surgery and am delighted with the results, it’s made me ultra-cautious about making another cosmetic move without first seeing the full picture. In the case of my breast reduction, I hoped this was an operation that would greatly impact the overall look of my body. What I now realise, and the perspective I’d employ today, would be take a more holistic approach. This means looking at all the things that influence how my body looks from my diet, the type of exercise I do and how a cosmetic surgery could fit into all of that and compliment a lifestyle rather than something that gets plonked perkily on top.
Secondly, even though I’m aware I can try botox once, let it wear off and pretend it never happened, I also know it’s far more likely I’ll want to keep revisiting that ‘high’ of a refreshed face. I know lots of people who have the most beautiful aesthetic work done and I’m regularly convinced, by their faces alone, that I should start on my own journey. I can also tell you than in the six months following my breast reduction, I was open to any kind of cosmetic treatment and felt how easy it was for there to be a snowball effect of one treatment or surgery easily leading to another and another.
That feeling of seeing an instant result is utterly intoxicating when it happens to you and when you see it on others. I saw a friend recently and rather than thinking she’d had any tweakments, I just felt as though her face was in sharper focus. Like getting the picture just right on the television screen or that test at the opticians where they ask you if the dots are clearer through lens A or lens B, her face just looked ‘sharper’ and I wanted to keep looking at it.
This is what I know is on the other side of great aesthetic work. A face that people want to look at, a face that looks in focus, its features amplified in just the right way to make them incredibly pleasing to the eye.
I do, however, worry about something called ‘perception drift’, a well-known phenomenon where a person’s perception of their appearances slowly but surely changes over time after a series of treatments. Not be to cruel or to name specific people in the public eye, but there are many who, if you showed them a picture of their faces today at their initial consultation and said ‘this is what you’ll look like’ there is no way they’d sign the consent form.
Even in something non-surgical and non-invasive like eyelash extensions, how many times have you seen someone start out with something natural and then end up with huge, cow-like lashes after a few treatments? Or lip filler that starts out natural and believable and ends up pneumatic when the temptation of another half a millilitre is too much to resist.
More isn’t always more but with treatments that aren’t inexpensive it’s natural to want to see what you’re paying for. When the bill for an aesthetic session can run into the thousands, you don’t want to feel as though you’re getting the Emporer’s new clothes even though we know the best results are the ones that are barely perceptible.
Therein lies the skill, and when friends of mine in the beauty industry make recommendations about cosmetic doctors, it’s those endorsed with phrases such as ‘they have such a light touch’ or ‘their work is exquisite and so subtle’ or the ultimate ‘their work is art’ that earns the best reptuations. These are the doctors whose work you’ve seen hundreds of times on red carpets, in films and on television but never realised you were seeing their handiwork because what you saw was ‘natural’ beauty.
My third reason for stalling is because of what any aesthetic work will take away from me and that’s watching my natural ageing process. Now, obviously that’s an incentive for having work done too, but as I stand on the brink of this decision, I have to ask myself if this is something I want to see or something I want to avoid.
I found myself looking at my mother the other day, the face I love and have probably looked at more than anyone else’s in the world, and I started looking at it, not lovingly, but almost as a sneak peek into the future. Instead of admiring how impossibly plump and dewy her skin is for a 78-year-old, I was critically analysing whether I’d want to ‘correct’ anything if that’s how I’m going to age. I had to snap myself out of it because it felt like the worst lens through which to look at my lovely mum and made me realise how we’ve become hyper-vigilant and hyper-critical about our faces. Again, this hyper-focus is because I can see the extremes in the public eye where people can’t go back from what they’ve done and what would have happened naturally is now anyone’s guess.
Considering all these things, I felt the best thing to do was to go and see an expert so I booked a consultation with Dr Joanna Christou at The Cosmetic Skin Clinic to get her assessment of what she would do to my face.
Joanna is a facial aesthetic doctor about whom there is considerable ‘buzz’ in the beauty industry because her work is deemed to be some of the best, plus she has a reputation for being incredibly discreet.
‘So,’ I asked her, ‘what do I need?’ A trick question, of course, because someone telling me that I ‘need’ something is license for me to leave an Emma-shaped hole in an exterior wall as I run for the hills. A good practitioner will always leave the decision making to you.
We talked through what would be appropriate for someone of my age who hasn’t had any treatments yet and it was very simple: muscle relaxation in places, some strategic volumisation and collagen boosting. So, as you’d expect botox, filler and profhilo (a beneath the skin moisturising treatment delivered via injection). We discussed placement and how filler could allow me to wear my eyeliner flicks again, how botox in my neck could delay the need for a neck lift later on and how profhilo would improve the quality of my skin overall.
She also went through the frequency of treatments ranging from every four to six months, every 12 to 18 months and every 18 to 24 months, which is important to know when you start to add up cost over time. I’ve said it before but this is a financial commitment as much as anything else so you have to do a long-range spending forecast if you’re taking this seriously.
Her recommendations were a tantalising proposition and I trust Joanna’s judgement and skill implicitly so have no issues about moving forward and letting her be the first to ‘break ground’ on my face and neck.
For years I’ve been saying that I’ll have botox, filler et al ‘one day’ and I have friends in the beauty industry who have promised they’ll give me the nod when the time comes for me to have something done, only doing so when it’s necessary and not before. Now that time has come and ‘one day’ is now, I’m surprised I’m as hesitant as I am.
However, as I’d say to anyone else, find out what your options are, find out what it’ll cost and how often you’ll have to have it done and make sure you’re comfortable with the advice and only then make your decision. And it’s vital you feel comfortable with whoever you choose to perform the treatments. As much as I want someone whose work is beautiful, I also want someone who’ll tell me ‘No, you don’t need that yet’ or ‘let’s leave it a few more months’ instead of upselling me at every appointment.
I’ve stated already that I want to avoid being hyper-focused on specific concerns, especially now I know what Joanna’s recommendations are, which means that while I linger in this space between not having them and having them (reader: I will have them at some point!) what I am most mindful of is the other things I can be doing to support my skin and the way I age.
It goes without saying, hopefully, that I wear an SPF50 every single day, that I use retinol, Vitamin C and regularly use LED to support my skin. I don’t smoke, I drink in moderation and I aim for seven hours sleep a night and exercise for at least half an hour five days a week. I’m doing ‘all the right’ things, but it’s undeniable that I’ve reached the point where a little help could make a pleasing difference…