Cosmetic Surgery

Although I have not quite reached the stage where women begin to consider having a face lift/injections/or botox, I do wonder whether I would ever truly consider doing it when the time comes. Sure it might be easy to say now "no I'll never do that!" Sometimes I can't help but feel what I would do if I had sagging boobs or two deep sagging wrinkles somewhere...

anyways here's another interesting article I read:

i love her quote in the end, "'We broke through the glass ceiling, and we broke the gender barrier, with a tremendous amount of effort, and now we all want to look like Atomic Kittens,' she said. 'Where is the emancipation in that?'"

source

As Vogue editor, she's an arbiter of beauty - so why does Alexandra Shulman say 'sorry, but I DEPLORE cosmetic surgery'?

By Alexandra Shulman

Last updated at 8:23 AM on 30th May 2008

Six of us were around the dinner table that night. Three women, each with our partners: myself, our hostess (a beauty in her 60s) and a ravishing looking woman of indeterminate age.

The last had returned from a week of radical detoxing and her figure was fantastic, sheathed in a tight pencil skirt above high Christian Louboutin shoes.

But it was her face that impressed more, with its pale, unlined, impassive beauty.

The next day, I rang my hostess to congratulate her on the evening, and after saying what fun we had had and how delicious the food was, I asked how old our fellow female guest was.

Women are now living in a time where 'having work done' is as commonplace as visiting the doctor

Alexandra Shulman: Editor of Vogue 'deplores cosmetic surgery'

'Oh 50, perhaps,' she replied. 'She can't possibly be 50!' I snapped back. 'She's much older than me. I remember her name in the papers when I was still at school.'

'Well, let me see, maybe 55? I don't know . . . Wasn't she looking wonderful, though. The best I've ever seen?'

'Mmm,' I concurred, adding most uncharitably: 'Do you think she's had work done?'

'Do you mean plastic surgery?' replied my friend. 'Of course not. She's not the type.'

Now that little conversation encapsulates the repartee that regularly boomerangs between women nowadays as we deal with the thorny subject of 'having work done'.

What exactly is the difference between 'having work done' and 'plastic surgery', we wonder? If you're having work done, are you having plastic surgery?

If you look good when everybody knows that you have 'had work done', do you win the same brownie points as you would if we didn't know? Are you more impressive if you are completely natural? And do we even know how old somebody is supposed to look at any given age nowadays?

I could go on. It's a minefield. We live in a time when cosmetic intervention (the blanket terminology used for procedures such as peels, Botox, collagen, or vitamin shots) has become extraordinarily common.

Only a few years ago, people spoke in hushed voices of having facelifts and plastic surgery. Such cheating - as it was often viewed - remained a clandestine affair. Those who went ahead checked themselves out of work or home and disappeared for a few days. This was then followed by a week of 'house detention', swathed in scarves and dark glasses.

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.

What's the point?

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.

Instead, we embark on a process of camouflage, indulging in procedures that sound, at best, unpleasant or, at worst, downright painful, while all the time the point - which is to defy the passing of time - is in itself unachievable.

My own position, as someone who edits Vogue and works in a world devoted to encouraging women to look good, is somewhat at odds with many of my peers.

I stubbornly refuse to try out any of these procedures, claiming that I am not in the habit of fighting battles I can't win. And the battle to keep my looks youthful certainly would come into this category.

In my idealised world, rather than spending my lunch hours constantly topping up my cheekbones, or propping up my jaw line, or (the one I find hardest to resist) scooping up a bit of that tired-looking puddle of crepe under my eyes, I would be learning a new language or teaching myself about the Old Masters, or reading Flaubert.

Anyway, doing something that would improve my mind rather than my face. (Though, unfortunately, I'm not doing that either.)

I also personally feel that it would be depressing to give into it.

While I happily highlight my hair and spend a small fortune on serums and oils, and anything with the word 'radiant' on the packaging, to smear onto my skin in an attempt to improve on nature, for some reason this doesn't, to my mind, fall into the same trap as starting a relationship with a surgeon.

Perhaps it's that when I go to bed at night and wake up in the morning, I can still see the real me.

But while I might be choosing not to tinker around with my face, I am surrounded by those who do. And if I make that choice I have to live with the consequences - which might become increasingly difficult as I age. And others seemingly don't.

Professional women who, until recently, have sneered at the vanity and frivolity of others having work done on their face (previously labelling them as bimbos, airheads, trophy wives and socialites) are now going in groups to see Dr Thingummyjig in Harley Street.

Why? Because they're propelled by a potent mix of the fear of looking older than their peers, and a sneaking admiration of those who achieve this modern alchemy successfully.

Once you start, it's hard to stop

another thing entirely - I wouldn't dream of doing that'); even by embarking on that first filler, they cross a psychological frontier into another country.

Everyone agrees that once you start, it's hard not to continue. And, of course, what starts with tweaking a bit around the forehead, moves on seamlessly to doing something to those grim lines around the mouth. Then before you know it, there's a simple tuck that could make all the difference to that grim middle-aged mask sneaking up on you.

And it's not only one's peers who are moving the goalposts, but the physically attractive role models we turn to as beacons of possibility, most of whom (particularly our most cherished 'silver stars') have had some kind of help or other.

Even though casting agents now annotate their notes with Facelift or No Facelift, we still like to think of all these women as naturally gorgeous, and therefore inspirations to us all. But the sad truth is there's scarcely an actress over 50 who hasn't experimented with a bit of intervention.

Undergoing cosmetic surgery is passing a major psychological frontier for many women

'In this country, people think you have to look effortlessly fabulous without any surgical assistance,' said a friend who is no stranger to the cosmetic surgeon.

And it's true - that old dab of Ponds Cold Cream and chopstick-in-the-hair routine that we cherish has meant that, unlike in other countries where everybody accepts that women get work done, many people still maintain a complete naivete about how widespread it is here.

There is also a polarised attitude towards famous women, along the lines that we want them to look great, but we don't want them to have achieved this through cosmetic surgery. Hence the mocking paparazzi pictures of them stepping out of Harley Street doorways.

And then there's the medical side of it all. Until relatively recently, it was easier to decide not to have cosmetic intervention because so much of it was so badly done, so clumsily achieved and so terrifying, using scalpels and anaesthetics and the whole hospital hoopla that most of would rather avoid.

But with the advances made each year, the decision becomes ever more complex.

However, even though the procedures might in themselves be simpler, and more effective, the issues remain the same.

Firstly, in a time where we are all obsessed with eating healthy foods, supporting organic initiatives and shielding our children from E numbers, how on earth do you defend the choice to introduce unnatural substances into your skin, the long-term effects of which we still don't know?

The Guinea Pig Generation

In the latest Vogue, we have published a piece called the Guinea Pig Generation, which explores just how concerned we should be about the things we are doing to our bodies.

We warn of the dangers of inexpert technicians, of undergoing procedures that have not been thoroughly tested, and of the as-yet unknown long-term effects.

And then there's the question of how people actually look if they choose to 'have some work done'. We all know the strange, petrified facial appearance of seemingly intelligent and successful women with ever-increasing lip sizes and scarily expressionless faces. You just need to switch on the television to see them.

It's the same problem as when you touch up the decorating in your house. When one room gets a paint job, the rest of the place looks a bit tired and grimy. When you do a bit of 'refreshing' around the eyes, suddenly there's a bit of a problem around the nose.

And where is the character and personality in a face that has been made into some Stepford Wife style clone?

Of course, the nub of the matter is that many women feel compelled to keep updating their faces in order to remain sexually attractive, and I'm afraid it's a fact of life that men often do trade in their wives for a younger model.

And it's also true that, with so many divorces, women often have to participate in the dating scene at a far later age.

But for all the ageing guys sporting a young woman on their arm, there are plenty more who find a woman of their own age attractive - yes, for an appearance that happily includes the character and individuality gained through the years.

The truth is that often it's not the men who are demanding anything of us, but we women - ludicrously perpetuating the notion in our own minds that a smooth brow and firm jaw will lead us to Nirvana.

If we feel compelled to continually play catch-up with our naturally ageing bodies, is it any wonder that we are likely to feel permanently dissatisfied?

'I despair of what we have done post-feminism,' said one hugely successful woman retailer to me the other day, adding that she'd once tried Botox, didn't like the effect, but was definitely going to go for the eyelift soon.

'We broke through the glass ceiling, and we broke the gender barrier, with a tremendous amount of effort, and now we all want to look like Atomic Kittens,' she said. 'Where is the emancipation in that?'