To say that women look bloody weird ….

I looked tired and grumpy and haggard before Botox. Now I look calm, relaxed, and slightly more youthful. I also experience fewer headaches and lower levels of anxious feelings - known beneficial side effects of Botox treatment. It’s a personal choice, you don’t have to do it. I don’t fake tan, or use filler, get my lashes or brows done but it doesn’t bother me that other people do.

This isn’t a thread about the aesthetics industry, or the pressures on people - particularly women, to not age. It’s just a thread to insult women. Another opportunity to judge women on their appearances. Groundbreaking.

Surely the concern for most women who don't have the time and money for fillers/ botox / surgery is that the look the OP is describing is setting some kind of expectation. That women should look a certain way, that women should focus on their appearance, that the male gaze should be a main focus.
So that is where the focus and concern is in terms of commenting, worrying etc.
I was in a cafe yesterday and picked up a copy of the Daily Fail. A woman there on the front cover advertising her wisdom on 'what works ' to keep her looking 'so good' at 60 something. The plastic surgery augmented look is sending a message that women in their natural state don't look good or good enough. Ditto that women need to go all out to make sure they don't age..
The posters on here saying not to critize other women's choices are of course right but are also missing the point. Culturally the pressures on women to look a certain way impact us all. And that is depressing and s*. It would be lovely if we could just celebrate diversity and beauty in all ot it's variation and natural state. Unrealistic I know but there you go x

This is why the industry tries to get them early, hooked in, long term custom.

Let's leave it at that. And next time you see me, do say hello - I'll be the one who's clearly a tragic victim of cosmetic surgery. You won't miss me!

I agree OP and it's not only how they look now, it's that they have set themselves on a treadmill because a few years down the line they'll think something else needs doing to their face, then again, and again. It produces people who all look the same. The argument 'well if it makes them happy' doesn't really hold water because it only makes them happy for a short while. Each to their own, but I hope this craze passes, I really do.

You're all used to that look, hence it's now normalised to you. None of my immediate circle, some well over 40, some well under, feel the need to get cosmetic work to accept ourselves. Like I said, you do you, but own it and stop pretending it's not obvious to others. Also, it's not hostile to give a realistic perspective.

I agree, OP. There's something deeply disturbing going on in society when older women feel the need to tamper with their faces in a desperate attempt to look younger and young women feel the need to emulate a blow up doll to feel attractive or 'enough'.

Some very defensive responses on here.

I honestly don't think I have a single female friend my age (40s) who doesn't get botox and fillers. And none of them look even remotely uncanny. Only one is visibly "done", but that was entirely intentional as in her culture, looking obviously surgically enhanced is a status symbol for a woman (well… for her husband, really, there's a very peculiar "rich wife" look she went for).
What most people notice on the street are just the bad jobs. And it still amazes me that in the UK you can get botox done practically in the back of a corner shop after a two-week course.
Obviously I do it because it makes me feel better, just like plenty of other things I do. That's why the hostility and absolutism in this thread feels so odd to me.

Nah, no need to do it in our 60s either......

I agree op. The worst is the younger women in their 20s making themselves look older and they all start morphing into the same style of face. I assume this is due to social pressure to look a certain way and I do feel sorry for them. Maybe do it when you are in your 60s but enjoy your natural, youthful face while you have it! But that's just knowledge that comes from age when you no longer have that face.

I was going to type something up but tbh this says it all.

Yay, let's support other women in poisoning themselves, deforming their faces and giving the message to other young women and girls that this is the way to be a valuable person!

I'm sure pasting lead on their faces made Elizabethan women happy, and foot-binding made Chinese women happy, and starving and over-exercising made Jane Fonda and her ilk happy.

In 100 years this ridiculous beauty standard will be seen for the horrorshow it is - nothing short of the mass poisoning and societal abuse of women. WTF happened to feminism?

Well I will be one of those old women with wrinkles and lines.i don’t look anything wonderous but i look like me.

I think that's probably something to do with French women want to look classy and understated, rather than "made up"

I think you've fooled yourself into thinking that your cosmetic work 'doesn't announce itself', when it most likely does. As I said, if it makes you happy, great, but own and accept that you need it to feel better about yourself.

Like all things, a little goes a long way and can do a lot to make you look fresher and more relaxed. Its when its overdone that it starts to look so startlingly fake. It also has an effect subliminally....we had a very beautiful female executive at work who was very successful, worked hard, said all the right things....but as a female employee I just couldnt warm to her. For a while I thought it was my own unconcious bias at work.....then I realised, subconciously I didnt trust her because she had no expression. Because her face didnt move, she didnt feel sincere and my instinct was not to trust her. We actually need these social cues to feed in to us as part of living and working together. So by all means, do whatever makes you happy and feel confident, but remember that its pointless erasing all your individuality and human-ness.

Why ask if the lashes are natural when it's clearly obvious they're not - it was not done with an intention to embarrass (both of these women are now clients of my lash lady)? I don't walk around with blinding turkey white veneers, cartoon duck lips, or gigantic boobs. Men who've slept with me, some for years, never even realised I had implants. British hairdressers (continental are much more clued up) never notice my colour isn't natural. My face is botoxed, lasered, resufaced and somehow still moves.
My point is that there is a version of cosmetic work that doesn't announce itself from across the room.

I think sometimes people don’t realise how weird they look. Like boiled frog syndrome, tweak, another tweak, another tweak. You need to spend a lot of money for it to look good and often having Botox and filler at your local salon isn’t the best.

The thing is you may look 15 Yrs younger the first time but it doesn't last needs topping up quite frequently and when your a bit further down the line then you start looking just a bit unusual.. it's botox. It's toxic.. how can putting this in your face make you look better in the long run? No way am I being bitchy I'm concerned so many OK looking women think they need to be doing this.

Ridiculous cosmetic interventions and surgery is a massive red flag for people who are more concerned with their appearance than anything substantial.

What's scary is that for some its a slippery slope....botox and fillers seem harmless to some young women and these aesthetic procedures seem almost as routine and as safe as getting a facial....but they can be an entry level treatment that develops into looking at thread lifts and even face-lifts in their thirties.

A couple of years ago i was working on a project with a cosmetic surgeons clinic in London (non aesthetics role) and spent a lot of time there. I'd say at least 20 percent of the clients were there because previous procedures or surgery hadn't gone well...and some of these people had previously gone to well known practitioners and surgeons. I met a lady who'd paid 30,000 for a face-lift with a well known surgeon and had to give up her job because the outcome was so disfiguring and a younger girl who had dropped out of uni because of an issue with her fillers (it was very noticeable) there can be complications that mean they are not always simple to dissolve.

If these things were an exact science and the outcome guaranteed then id say, great, whatever makes people happy..but a bad result can be life changing for all the wrong reasons...sometimes even with a very experienced provider.

My concern is people are just taking these things too lightly now.

Agree, and op bemoaning the fact that she’s no nice faces to look at. Poor op how will she cope.

women don’t owe you pretty mate.

The acronym for I’m a Celeb must take longer to think about and write than the full thing!

That aside, it’s more the endless fillers and make up style for me. So many young women looks the same nowadays.

The thing is, naturally nobody would look like they did 20 years ago, and thus it's obvious from that alone that she's had stuff done.

If you're happy, great, but you're seriously fooling yourself if you think 'nobody has clocked any of it'. Asking if the lashes are natural suggests they don't look natural. Veneers are always obvious. 7 hours first a hair colour would 7 hours too much for me.