They call it the Academy Awards. I call it the Botox Derby.
Who doesn’t watch the annual parade of celebrities and examine them, not just for their choice of gown and shoes and hairstyle, but for how they're wearing the years?
And last week’s show provided the perfect opportunity to ruminate on the debate about aging – an issue, like few others, that threatens female happiness and, in this modern, Botox-happy age, pits vanity against principle. It can feel more fraught than the decision to have sex for the first time.
For there sat Annette Bening, best actress nominee for The Kids Are All Right, next to her aging hunk of a husband, Warren Beatty. She looks good, you think. She looks normal. No obvious cosmetic “intervention.” (Many “experts” say she hasn’t.)
You feel a little cheered by the fact that a woman her age (52) doesn’t have to freeze her face or have a brow-lift to feel good because she has a great career to make her happy. (And, presumably, a non-wandering husband.) At this age, it’s not about the exterior, but the interior, right? Haven’t we earned the right to not be judged by our looks?
But that little euphoria of relief only lasts a nanosecond before a not-so-charitable thought careens in behind it: Yeah, well, her face is what happens When You Don't.
We are all the hotness police, tagging who looks better than whom, if only in the privacy of our minds.
There are plenty of examples of what happens When You Do. Granted, some are monstrous. But there are some who look “refreshed” in a way that provokes hideous envy. What is Sharon Stone doing, for example? Also 52, she glided onto the red carpet in a one-shouldered black gown, with feathery details, her blonde hair in a fantastic gravity-defying ’do.
She says she’s trying to age naturally, with the help of good nutrition and exercise. Others gossip that her regime consists of needles (for fillers and Botox) but no knives. Everyone has principles, you see. Whatever she’s doing, she took home the Oscar for hottest fifty-something.
It’s all about choices – yet again. That’s the terrible beauty of women's lives. We have to decide whether to be a Wife or not, to be a Mother or not, then to be a Stay-at-Home Mom or a Working Mom, and then to be a Woman of a Certain Age who either does or doesn’t. And, honey, it’s not just about colouring your grey – because frankly, it’s only thanks to chemical hair goop that people can even entertain the idea that 50 is the new 30.
Widely unacknowledged is that at the heart of the debate is a huge tension between sadness over the loss of youth and a new type of happiness that’s possible with humorous acceptance and the realization that you don't have to live by other people’s standards.
It came as no surprise to me to discover that the top non-surgical procedure in the United States (Canada doesn't gather statistics on cosmetic procedures) is Botox. Nearly 2.5 million people had the injections in 2008, the last year for which data is available from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Women account for 92 per cent of all cosmetic procedures. And it’s from ages 30-50 – what I think of as the Age of Fading Youth years –– that 45 per cent of cosmetic procedures take place.
