To say that women look bloody weird ….

She’s stuffed with fillers and tweak ends etc and I know this because she openly talks about it on her podcasts! Particularly the one she does with Joanne McNally - which is hilarious by the way, highly recommend it - as they both get loads of these tweakments done and very much talk about it in a positive way. It’s the only thing I don’t like about their pod BUT they do talk about everything on there.
So it would be disingenuous not to say that’s what they’re doing that week if that’s what they’d were doing.
but given that they’re both in their early 40s I do think it’s shame that they feel the pressure to do all this shit to their faces.

lots of women seem to want that MAGA wife face and it’s bizarre to me, particularly the young women…

I didn't see any noticeable results from these, especially when compared to HA biorevitalisation treatments like profhilo. When staged with a halo laser and topical tret, those can genuinely make skin appear like late 20s max.

This morning’s BBC article on polynucleotides picks up on lack of regulation within the cosmetics industry.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3e0j1lv123o

Ha, no doubt. Meanwhile I'm just here being moderately disturbed by 12yr old DD's friends nonchalantly planning which injectables they'd get first, while also dropping hundreds on skincare that is literally wrecking their skin, and hoping to God the shrinking-celeb craze doesn't catch on too quickly. It's bonkers to pretend like the beauty industry doesn't have an impact, or that people's choices are made solely in a vacuum.

LOL, yeah! OR Janice (Also from The Muppets!) 😆

Thank God the "your body your choice, a woman can do whatever she wants with no critique whatsoever, if it makes you happy it's no one else's business" crowd weren't around in the heroin chic era of my teens. Adults didn't generally applaud extreme weight loss measures as 'empowerment', or pretend not to notice when girls were vomiting their lunch into the toilets at school, or treat the use of smoking and laxatives to achieve thinness as somehow being an acceptable, even feminist, choice.

Instead, they told us not to be so bloody stupid. They told us we were fine how we were, to pay no mind to the magazines saying Alicia Silverstone and Jennifer Love Hewitt were heifers (seriously WTAF was that?!), the beauty culture that said we needed to starve or we were worthless, the idea that ugly was the very worst thing a girl could be. They told us the truth - that we could seriously harm our bodies with these behaviors, and that starvation didn't in actual fact look good. That none of this was actually our idea or choice in the first place, but a product of a poisonous standards placed on women. They didn't stand aside and let us have at it, they went to battle for us.

Fashion moves in circles. Heroin chic appears to be coming back. I wonder how many here would stand back and happily let their daughters follow along, because "it's their choice what they do to their bodies and no one should ever comment".

I just wasted a couple of minutes imagining Elizabethan Mumsnet. Enoy.

OP: AIBU that Venetian Ceruse and Belladonna make women look weird and are harmful?

With slack, corpse-white faces and vacant black eyes, they look more like ghouls risen from the grave than the fresh-faced beauties they imagine themselves. With habitual use, these cosmetics will indeed make them resemble the undead as their skin blisters and peels, their hair falls out, their vision fails and their minds give way to paranoid hallucinations.

The apothecaries and the famous society women promoting these poisons as the secret of ultimate beauty should be prosecuted. They won't be, since our own beloved Queen herself adopts this look.

Replies:

What's with all the woman-hatred? It's none of your business what women choose to do to their faces! Choice of cosmetics is entirely personal, and who can blame a woman for following the example of our radiant regent!

The misogyny seeps from your post like the black pus of a buboe. Ghouls, corpses, slack, vacant - you claim concern for women, yet show them zero respect. Let women please themselves and look to your own jealousy.

@lastones Its astonishing the difference it can make.

I grew up in the 90s so botox/cosmetic procedures etc werent available then, however, thankfully I was blessed with a great figure and I knew exactly how to use makeup to my advantage and it opened a lot of doors for me in life.

I noticed how things were easier for me than my peers who maybe weren't as blessed in that department and it's absolutely true that attractive people have it far easier in life.

That might not be "right" or fair but it's damn true.

Yes, funnily enough, once I completed my glow up , I became more employable and mysteriously more visible to the human eye. My career went vertical, and, shockingly, male colleagues suddenly realised I existed in three dimensions - it gave me a boost that I could not imagine was possible. Not from using any female charms, just becoming visible gave me such a massive advantage compared to what I was used to.

I even managed to get married and have children with someone who actually contributed to the project budget, which was a pleasant plot twist considering I'd already resigned myself to becoming a donor-assisted single mother by choice at 30. Sharing life expenses with partners? Also new and delightful.

Therapy savings alone probably run into the tens of thousands, as it turned out my depressive episodes practically evaporated the moment my skin stopped looking like a lunar landscape painted in angry red with pus-filled craters. The irony, of course, is that I spent years being denied systemic retinoids on the grounds that it might harm my mental health… while walking around with a face that absolutely did. Had to black market it, with a foreign dermatologist consulting remotely. Veneers were another big win, I am a tetracycline baby and my natural teeth are tiny, unevenly spaced, pointy and brownish yellow (I warn you, don't google it - it is ghastly).

Of course it wasn't done for any of this, but if we're talking strict financial ROI here, it's easily the second-best investment I've ever made, right after my education.

Ultimately it keeps going to back to the male gaze because most film and tv shows are made by men. Same with fashion. It is a lot of men who decide what woman should look like.

Men who do it look bloody weird too!

I dont know, thats a difficult question. I think there's a certain type of male that likes it, but a lot that don't. I think it's often more to do with other women - either trying to fit in with them, feel as though they're as good them as or trying to exert superiority over them in terms of 'attractiveness'.

As for celebrities (as in actual celebrities, not z listers) and anti-aging, I think it's the abject fear of missing out on gigs and/or becoming irrelevant. Look at what Linda Evangelista has done to herself - I don't think that's for the male gaze as such, but her own inability to accept that she's aged and isn't the youthful beauty she once was. So much of her self esteem is obviously bound up in her looks, because society has told us that's what's important and that narrative has been controlled by men.

Everytime I see a blonde woman with false eyelashes, I immediately think of Miss Piggy!

Ahhhh this is lovely that your life and feelings of self worth have turned around.

I agreed with OP but now I agree with you too. Dilemma!!!

I think the problem as I see it is that it's becoming so normal to I next your face that it looks like a statement if you don't.

I don't but I also have no hangups about my appearance. I don't mean I'm exceptionally goodlooking to the general public, I mean I feel happy with my appearance.

I think women and men should do exactly what they want to do with their faces. And if they want to be bigger or slimmer that’s ok too. While I wouldn’t do anything to my face lol far from perfect I’m very happy with my face and body and at 68 years old I have confidence and happy to be alive. And grateful for waking up everyday too many people are worried about what others think of them so want to join the rest of the crowd. As the song goes you are beautiful don’t bring me down today. Christina agulara

@RampantIvy 100% agree with your post. The younger women (like 18 to 23/24 ish) who have these things done to their face look a clear decade and a half older than their age, even in their early 20s or younger.

I dread to think what they will look like in 15-20 years! 😖

You don't have to defend your point @GoingbackwardsForwards You're not wrong.

I cannot imagine the kind of life that you refer to but I do know that there are women who are not considered beautiful who are interesting, curious and confident who lead extraordinary lives.

Well said. It's the pressure that so many people, not just women, who feel that they have to conform to some kind of uniform look that is so depressing, and the fact that everyone is a clone of everyone else.

I find some of the defensive posts on here quite depressing.

I admit that I really dislike the trout pout and filler look and think it does nothing to enhance anyone's looks, be they male or female.

If it was done in a more subtle way then it wouldn't be noticeable and I don't blame anyone who wants to enhance the way they look. After all, I do wear make up.

I recall watching a couple of episodes of vacuous airheads posing Love Island with DD last year. One of the women was the same age as DD (24) and looked about 20 years older than her from all the work she had had done. Her face had so much filler that she couldn't even close her mouth. It is this kind of work that I really don't understand. And it really can't be healthy.

In what way? You look and feel better?
You ‘re more desirable, employable?

It’s extraordinary, in this visual age, the power that ‘beauty’ confers. You can have an unimaginable life if you play your cards right.

I don’t criticise individuals for what they do to their faces- their face, their choice. I do, however, feel it’s a real shame that so many women feel they have to alter their physical appearance in a way that has long lasting effects and carries not insignificant risk. I don’t feel comfortable with the fact that so many women look at a completely normal, even beautiful face and feel so dissatisfied with it that they pay money to inject toxins and fillers in to it in an effort to reach an unattainable ideal. I think the fact that society still attaches so much value to the appearance of a woman’s face is quite depressing. I, myself, recognise that at times I HATE aspects of my healthy, strong, capable body because of the way it looks and I’m angry that despite knowing that is illogical and is entirely a consequence of a patriarchal society that controls and commodifies women, it is so deeply ingrained that I cannot ignore it. Don’t hate the players, hate the game.