BRYONY GORDON: I had Botox and suffered a very unexpected side-effect. It made me realise the truth about ageing... and celebrities and their endless tweakments
I was having a coffee with a friend when she announced that, later that day, she was off to get her ‘face done’.
I wasn’t sure what she meant. Was she going to have a facial? Was she visiting Space NK for a makeover? No, it turned out that she was off to get Botox and ‘perhaps a little piriform fossa’.
‘A little whatty whata?’ I replied, utterly confused. ‘It’s filler, Bryony.’ She seemed stunned by my ignorance. ‘You get it injected into the nasolabial folds.’
She had to explain to me what nasolabial folds were – smile lines, apparently, rather than any of the more intimate places my mind had ventured to. I sat there, my face by now a series of deep frown lines as she told me that everybody got tweakments, and I was in danger of missing the boat if I didn’t start soon.
‘You should get a bit of Botox at the very least. Otherwise you’re going to start to look old.’
I was reminded of our conversation this week, when I read that Trinny Woodall, 60, had started getting Botox at the tender age of 35.
The chat with my friend took place two years ago, when I was 42. Back then, I naively believed I had a few years to go before I felt the pressure to succumb to tweakments. And yet, as the days went on, and I asked more and more friends if they’d had them, I discovered I hadn’t just missed the boat when it came to injecting things into my face … it had sailed off into the sunset, with all my mates on it, who were having a whale of a time without me on their decadent tweakment cruise.
‘Join us,’ said another friend. ‘Stop being so judgemental about tweakments, and remember that women should be able to do what they want to their faces without being criticised for it. It’s really not much different to the LED mask you use every night, or the retinol you slather on your face.’ (It’s true that since getting sober, I’ve become a skincare obsessive, loving the ritual of looking after myself with expensive serums, moisturisers and eye creams.)
What Not To Wear fashion guru Trinny Woodall, 60, started getting Botox treatments at the tender age of 35
‘At least try it before being so sniffy about it,’ she added, and if she could have arched an eyebrow at me, I’m sure she would have done.
A few months later, she took me to her ‘face person’, a woman in London’s glitzy Knightsbridge with a star-studded client list. I asked for a tiny bit of Botox between my eyebrows and was told by the woman that she ‘didn’t like that, as an option. It’s much better if we do the forehead too, to keep things smooth’.
Too pathetic and weak-willed to question her authority – also, she was wielding a needle at my face – I did what she advised. I left the clinic, around £300 poorer, looking and feeling no different. But as the days went by my left eyebrow began to droop and my husband wondered out loud if I was feeling OK.
I went back to the clinic and she shrugged and said this sometimes happened, before injecting a bit more into the droopy area and sending me on my way, suggesting I come back in three to four months for a top up.
And while people did start to say how fresh and dewy I looked, I never went back – to her or any other practitioner. The drooping had put me off. I decided I needed to be able to move my face, and that I could not be bothered with the upkeep or the expense – because once you get on the old tweakment boat, there is absolutely no getting off it.
You only have to look at photos of Donatella Versace, in the UK this week visiting Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, to see what I’m talking about. Apparently, Donatella will be 70 next year, and yet she seems to be ageing in reverse. It’s as if she has fed herself through AI and asked a surgeon to emulate the results. Then there are the photos of Nicole Kidman, promoting the aptly-named movie Babygirl this week – she’s 57 going on 15. Demi Moore is another one who clearly has a portrait in her attic, because at 62, she’s never looked better.
Then there’s Trinny, who has been revealing how she looks so fabulous at 60. As well as Botox, her routine involves regular goes on a £633 device that delivers ‘non-invasive face lifts’ through electrical muscle stimulation. She also injects peptides into her stomach four times a week, and has twice weekly micro-needling because ‘I don’t have time to go for facials’. It’s a wonder she has the time for anything given how extensive her beauty routine is.
And herein lies my resistance to ‘ageing down’: I simply don’t have the energy or the inclination to spend the next 30 years of my life trying to look 20. I don’t want to feel ashamed of looking my age, because I’ve realised that ageing is a privilege not everyone gets to do.
Having wasted so much of my youth obsessing over my weight and body shape, I’m damned if I’m going to give over what remains of my life to some ridiculous notion of perfection that only exists through costly visits to aesthetic practitioners.
There is, if you will pardon the pun, a fine line between wanting to look after yourself and wanting to look younger because we live in a society that still abhors women with wrinkles … and I feel like many of us are crossing it every day, myself included.
The lure of tweakments is subtle and seductive and it’s hardly a surprise given the pressures that abound on social media. But where, exactly, does it all end?
So, no more tweakments for me. And I hope that by calling myself out on it in this column, I will encourage more women to join me. We don’t have to grow old gracefully – but let’s at least leave our hard-won nasolabial folds alone, eh?
Secret sign Keely would rather be in sportswear
Keely Hodgkinson in her elegant black dress at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony this week
Congratulations to the wonderful Keely Hodgkinson, who just became the fourth consecutive woman to win the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year. Keely picked up her trophy in a rather glamorous gown, which on closer inspection was covered in tiny Nike swooshes. I reckon that, like me, she’d much rather be in leggings and trainers than a posh frock. You can take the girl out of the athleisurewear, but you can’t take the athleisurewear out of the girl!
Those costly c-sections save lives!
Shocking figures released this week show that half of new mums have suffered mentally or physically because of traumatic births. It’s so sad to hear that 11 and a bit years after I had a baby, very little has changed. My NCT instructor told me off for ‘bringing the mood down’ by asking about caesareans – she only wanted to talk about so-called ‘natural’ births.
I had no idea what to expect when, after three days of being in labour, I was told my daughter was stuck and I needed an emergency c-section. I felt like I’d failed. But I can see now that the only thing that is failing is this medically misogynistic culture we live in, that doesn’t want to spend more on ‘costly’ c-sections, despite the fact they save the lives of women and babies.
My ban on Temu gifts
My 11-year-old daughter’s Christmas wish list consists entirely of links to horrifyingly cheap tat on Temu, the Chinese commerce site that has amassed 15 million users since its launch in the UK last year. This week, experts warned that many of the products posed serious health risks – and urged parents to check items before gifting them to children. Indeed, it’s the first time I’ve told my daughter I won’t be buying her things because they’re too cheap.
Confidence clinic
We’re in the final stretch of Christmas, where everything starts going wrong. Husbands announce they’ve forgotten to buy the one present you asked them to, visiting relatives say they’re vegan. Here’s a Christmas gift for you: a reminder that it’s just a day, it doesn’t have to be perfect … and nobody will remember anyway once you’ve given them the Baileys.
- I think that as I get older, I’m going to channel Sir Rod Stewart. This week he stepped out in Mayfair in all his wrinkly glory, wearing an amazing slashed neckline that was lower than his wife ¬Penny’s. Rod is 80 next month, but he’s proof that staying ‘forever young’ is a state of mind, rather than a case of expensive tweakments.
