Enter Kingdom Of Wrinkle-free Heaven Through Aye To Needle

Sun Herald

Sunday October 14, 2007

Mia Freedman

I'M trying to be less judgmental of women who've had cosmetic surgery. This is difficult. But in my quest to be less bitchy and more Buddhist-like, I'm trying. So now, instead of flicking through magazines and snorting loudly at the shiny, puffy faces of all those celebrities who've obviously had work done, I shall feel sorry for them.

Because it must suck to have your job prospects limited by your looks. And to have younger, hotter versions of yourself incessantly nipping at your high heels. And to be endlessly snapped looking your artificial best in glamorous photo shoots and your unguarded worst by paparazzi.

No wonder when these women are alone in their enormous marble bathrooms, they peer into the mirror and freak out. "I look old! Ugly! Argh!" they panic, summoning the needle fairy on speed dial. Imagine thinking you look so ghastly that "inject more bum fat into my face" regularly tops your to-do list.

A decade ago, the women who had cosmetic surgery were mostly old. Their options were pretty much limited to face lifts, which made it easy for younger women to draw a line in the sand about what they'd do to stay young. This line was usually drawn with a knife, as in "I will never cut my face".

But in the past few years the needle has replaced the scalpel and the line has begun to blur. You can puts loads of fun stuff in your face with a syringe! There's Botox of course and the hottest new thing: injectable fillers. Collagen, Restylane and your own fat can be merrily jabbed into your lips and face to fill all your lines and saggy areas.

So why do I care what insecure celebrities or regular women do to their faces? Am I jealous? Do I secretly want to have my bum injected into my face too? Not really, no.

My problem is this: it feels like cheating. Like performance-enhancing drugs, appearance-enhancing procedures are getting more sophisticated and harder to detect. If you were a clean sprinter whose competitors took steroids, your very best effort would appear disappointing by comparison. Like Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, sprinting her Aussie heart out in 2000 while doped-up Marion Jones flew past.

Similarly, if you're a woman whose face is natural when more and more women your age are getting jabbed, slowly but surely society will recalibrate what your age looks like. Slowly but surely, real will start to look old and shabby.

Lest I get too comfy on my high horse, I must confess to dipping my own toe (actually face) into Procedure World earlier this year. My skin was going through a not-happy-Jan phase due to stress and I was desperate to banish my zits back to puberty where they belonged. This is because I am vain.

A make-up artist friend told me about something called microdermabrasion, which sounds hardcore but is basically a fancy name for an expensive scrub. The place she recommended was a high-end salon that specialises in fillers and injectables. Microdermabrasion is the tamest procedure they do.

As I took a seat in the waiting area, I pretended to read a magazine while obsessively staring. Most of the women there were in their 40s but had that oddly unnatural, puffy, frozen look you get from Botox and fillers.

Before I'd stared nearly enough, I was shown into a room by a lady in a white coat and told to take a seat at the table. In front of me was a magnified shaving mirror. After some soothing small talk, White Coat Lady got down to it. "Now Mia, I want you to look into this mirror and tell me all the things that bother you about your face." All the things? As I blinked back at her, all I could think was: "DO NOT LOOK IN THE SCARY MIRROR OR YOU WILL COME OUT OF HERE WITH YOUR EXPRESSIONS FROZEN AND YOUR BUM JABBED INTO YOUR FACE."

I pushed the mirror away. "Um, actually, well, I'm just here for microdermabrasion because I have a few pimples. That's all I want, really."

She seemed visibly disappointed to hear this but pushed on, explaining what the "procedure" would entail. Something about 20 minutes, two types of organic crystals, doesn't hurt and "you might be a bit pink for a couple of hours afterwards". My skin improved (maybe because I learnt to meditate) and I never went back but it sparked a flood of conversations with my girlfriends about where our personal lines in the sand currently were.

"Is an injection even considered surgery?", muse a new generation who were firmly in the "no surgery ever!" camp in their 20s but as they hit their 30s, suddenly aren't so sure.

Remember how your parents always warned you that one puff of a joint could ultimately lead to heroin in the gutter? Maybe it's the same with vanity. Maybe we all started down the slippery slope the very first time we shaved our legs or plucked our eyebrows or put lemon juice in our hair. At least the lemon juice wasn't in a syringe!

Drugs a real drag

HERE'S another reason not to take drugs, kids: they'll turn you into a boring adult. The 32-year-old Big Love actor Chloe Sevigny (pictured) blames her drug-taking younger years for her current lack of grown-up hobbies. "I did Just Love taking hallucinogens," she told the New York Daily News. "I probably shouldn't promote that. But I often feel it's because I experimented when I was younger that I have no interests as an adult."

'I do' but you don't

TECHNOLOGY claims yet another victim: the face-to-face marriage proposal. Why propose to your future spouse in private (and in person) when you can do it on YouTube in public? That's what thousands of romantic geeks are doing. And when you've made your romantic video, you could also upload it into a specially-designed jewellery box (above) that has its own LCD display. For the bargain price of $US198.95 ($221) you can buy "Euricase - the ring that can propose". But will it consummate your marriage for you?

www.mamamia.com.au

© 2007 Sun Herald

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