To say that women look bloody weird ….

[GoingbackwardsForwards]

.. when the only part of their face that moves is their mouth and eyes.

And don’t get me started on the massive fish lips.

Never see any naturally beautiful young women on TV these days. Such a shame

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

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.

Men who do it look bloody weird too!

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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".

Steady on @ForeverScout. They will be along soon to accuse you of being misogynistic or jealous, probably both. 😀

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Op is just stating a fact. Women look weird with the OTT fillers. They look alien IMO but you crack on, each to their own.

Op is just stating a fact. Women look weird with the OTT fillers. They look alien IMO but you crack on, each to their own

I agree.

I don't understand why anyone would agree that the OTT fillers and excessive trout pout lips look is the way to pressurise our teenagers that this is the only acceptable way to look. And as far as I'm concerned this applies to men as well as women. Look at Barry Manilow, for example.

I suspect that posters who are defensive about excessive tweakments have had the work done themselves.

‘Op is just stating a fact. Women look weird with the OTT fillers. They look alien IMO but you crack on, each to their own’

Exactly- it’s a trend, a toxic one INHO- where young women try to iron out every line that appears and puff of their faces to be more voluptuous and look like a smooth AI version of themselves.
Which wouldn’t bother me too much except I have a teen daughter who’s skin care routine would put a super models to shame, talks about wanting to go on holiday to Korea ( not for the culture) and despite having no social
media is still absolutely absorbing all of this nonsense.

also - some of this is permanent. Plastic surgery is permanent. I have a friend that got her pubic hair entirely lasered off because no hair down there has been a huge thing for years - thanks to porn - and now massively regrets it. And guess what? Pubes are back!

I know a woman who runs a beauty clinic- a Botox and laser one- and her face looks like a China dolls face at 50. REALLY weird I think as. Her face doesn’t move but she is inundated with clients who see her and think she’s looks AMAZING.
One person’s alien face is another’s amazing I suppose.

Not necessarily. I'm defensive of other women whenever gratuitous insults are directed about their appearance, regardless of the reason for the insult.
I see no difference in calling out referring to other women as grotesque or 'alien' because they've had treatments and calling out referring to them as grotesque because they're overweight.
Its never OK to speak about women's looks in these terms, and I'll never stop saying so.
We really should be able to discuss the issues with cosmetic procedures without resorting to the language of the playground.

@5128gap I agree.

Op is just stating a fact. Women look weird with the OTT fillers. They look alien IMO but you crack on, each to their own

I work with a woman who is obese - she eats a lot of junk food, and admits it. To me, she looks grotesque and huge. Thats ok for me to say though - I'm just stating a fact.....

Polynucleotide- never again!

I recently read that women aren’t allowed to even own their own faces anymore. There’s been such an outcry about Claire Danes because she doesn’t have fillers, Botox and her face actually has expression. It’s sad that women have been brainwashed to become so detached from their true selves.

I agree, the language surrounding women with a certain cosmetic look can be very coarse, in a way that is not used with people considered unattractive for other reasons.
I put my hand up to this and will
do better when engaging in these conversations.

I recently read that women aren’t allowed to even own their own faces anymore.

What does this mean?

Can you elaborate a bit please?

Which women and where did you read it?