‘Plastic beauty has had its day’

The more people go under the knife to stay young, the more freakish they look. Staying natural really is the only way to age beautifully.

Women used to aspire to looking ‘good for their age’ which meant, simply, well preserved given how many years you had been walking the planet. Now, ‘good for your age’ often means something rather different: an unlined face, snow-white teeth, a pert (possibly enhanced) body; and everybody believes they can cheat the march of time. Well, not quite everybody.

There are people like us – Naturals – who are keen to stay looking as youthful as we can for as long as we can but who refuse to resort to ‘procedures’. And then there are the Plastics – women who would eat the still-beating heart of an osprey if they thought it might reduce the incidence of fine lines; they have changed the rules of ageing for everyone.
The combination of plastic surgery and youth worship has actually altered the way we look at people’s faces and bodies. We live in a culture where your worth is measured according to whether or not you can still shop in TopShop and carry off fierce heels and, in short, physically compete with women who are decades younger than you. This is why we are the first generation of 40-somethings who are often skinnier than we were in our 20s. In this sense, age has become ‘just a number’, because what counts is how young you look. Yet being the wrong side of 40 is still not something you necessarily want to advertise.

That said, I feel the backlash coming when Naturals will be rewarded for their integrity and ageing gracefully will be back on the agenda. Nicole Kidman has been pilloried for her frozen forehead, and the more civilians who convert to the Plastic way, the more they are starting to look like an alien army. Soon everyone, not just Naturals, will recognise it’s better to look your age than like a visitor from another planet. And, as that starts to happen we will learn to live with the possibility that life beyond 40 doesn’t have to mean invisibility (look at Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren).
And I genuinely believe that life gets better after 40 – even though you may have to put away the hotpants – because 40 is when you get your final booster top-up from the self-esteem fairy. No more worrying that you’re not doing the right thing, in the right place, at the right time. It’s no coincidence that I met the man I married in my mid-40s because – finally – I was properly comfortable in my skin and ready to relax into my life. Looking back, my 30s were the decade I was least at ease because I wasn’t sure what I wanted. And thumbing through old photograph albums, I can honestly say I look a lot better now than I did then. In other words, happiness is the most effective anti-ageing treatment going. We call it nature’s Botox.

- How to Meet a Man after Forty and other Midlife Dilemmas Solved (Penguin, £7.99) by Shane Watson is out now.

Words: Shane Watson