LONDON—It’s the mother of all Sunday mornings. Not enough sleep. Diet of rich food. Too much alcohol-aided gaiety. Unfunny jokes. Have you heard about the bra they invented for older women? They call it sheep dog because it rounds the breasts up and gets them pointing in the same direction.

I look in the mirror and a stranger with a face like thunder stares back. Droopy eyelids. Grim determination on my lips. Soon I will have more chins than the Hong Kong phone book. A new frown line on my forehead. Do they multiply with wanton abandon in the night? Merciful mother of God, how did I get a trifle too punctually old?

I’m a woman of a certain age counting the unreturning years. Once you reach 50, I accept that in the calculus of your life, there’s now more behind you than in front of you. Jolie in midlife crisis, the bloom has come off the rose. Age, Michael Dibdin wrote, makes us all exiles in our own country. If only age cannot wither us!

Think artifice with deception, as professional beauties do. Everything we see hides yet another thing. Industrial-strength makeup? A king’s ransom in face creams and serums? Some things have the small power to alter, but not to reclaim.

When did we become simpering prey to our own vanities and insecurities? To be young, it’s true, was very heaven. I no longer indulge myself the deluded wish to be young again, but I want the stranger in the mirror to smile without cratering more gullies on her face. I want her to please, with a fondly remembered knowing look, quicksilver wit and humor.

Or I could just give up the struggle and buy a new facial fabulousness with a little nip and tuck. In the US, some $15 billion is spent every year on cosmetic surgery. In Britain, where we have a more relaxed attitude to the toll of the passing years, we spend just over £1 billion. In a spavined financial system, this is a lot of wonga to spend on, well, hidden shallows. A new pert nose for £4,000; the £6,500 bikini-body job is a snip. Would I know what to do with new £5,000 breast implants?

The cosmetic beauty industry—surgery, lasers, peels, injectables, hyaluronic fillers, stem-cell transfers, human-growth hormones—is big, extreme and gets lots of print miles and TV coverage; it sells dreams and illusions ferociously. Woe betide the fool who underestimates women’s—and, increasingly, men’s—insecurities about their looks and bodies. Surgically lift your feet to get into new Jimmy Choos; have a rib or two taken out for that sexy Herve Leger bodyhugger; nipple enlargements and vaginal labiaplasty for super sex.

Women who have been Botoxed too many times they can no longer frown have freaky faces in permanent aspic; women who undergo three-in-one procedures under a single general anesthetic are in grave risk of infection or thrombosis. Gastric bands that burst; trout lips that swell to three times their size.

Deaths

Pauline Bainbridge went for a £3,500 liposuction to reduce the size of her thighs and died 48 hours later; the coroner ruled that the surgery contributed to her cardiac arrest. The author Olivia Goldsmith died while having a chin tuck. French surgeon Dr Daniel Marchec warned that one in 20 antiwrinkle jabs could lead to the permanent damage of subcutaneous fat. The US FDA is currently investigating 16 Botox-linked deaths. The Journal of Neuroscience reports on research done by doctors on rats that show Botox toxin can spread from the face to the brain.

When you play around with what nature has given, some things will go wrong. A little Botox here, Restylane there, a Sculptra filler, nose job—it’s an impossible spiral turning back the frightful clock. “No matter how much money you spend, or how much plastic surgery you have, time’s winged chariot will catch up with you and march all over your face,” wrote Alex Kuczynski in “Beauty Junkies.”

We are bombarded by makeovers beyond all recognition on TV; buy-now, pay-later surgical deals and hard-sell practices, such as lunchtime facelifts. “Offers are rushing people into procedures before they can fully consider whether or not the treatment is appropriate for them. The images in many of the ads have been touched up, encouraging false expectation. It’s all about clinics getting people’s money,” said Douglas McGeorge of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.

Low self-esteem

Why endure all this? As a measure to correct God’s unkind mistakes—cleft palate, squint—some procedures are essential. But some of us have low self-esteem and are lost to self-punishing convolutions and delusions. We have equated aging with being sexless and ugly. Some are so dysmorphic they think they’re having it done for their psychological wellbeing. “Some women worry that younger women will steal their jobs,” said Dr Daniel Sister. Or their men and meal tickets. Some have perfect faces and darling ears; it’s tragic there’s so little between them. Some are so self-obsessed and full of compulsive denial, with imperfections that are so trivial, they find it impossible to get off the surgical treadmill; they come back for more, they’re in it for life.

Writer Rod Liddle advises a regime of happy delusion. “Never look in a mirror at a distance of 12 ft. Never weigh yourself. Only speak to people sufficiently polite not to mention your physical shortcomings. Eat the hell you like with abandon and drink more to encourage the delusion.” Sante!

I look in the mirror again and begin to recognize the stranger with the lived-in face: a tiny scar from a rowdy game seven-year-olds play; lines from laughing and bursts of joy; sadness in the eyes which is, oddly, a balm of comfort to my very own breast. Age brings advantages—like courage, to look age squarely in the eye; to be unfailingly lively, original and kind to oneself. “The great power of a woman is her theatrical aspect, her mask, her sense of mystery,” said Yves St Laurent. Surgery? How much better to have a heart easily made glad.

Non-surgical tips:

* Drink lots of water.

* Avoid sugar and alcohol.

* Get 8 hours’ sleep.

* Exercise regularly.

* Keep stress levels low.

* Avoid the sun.

* Think positively young.

(Inquirer News Service)