How I lost my botox virginity AT 74
Experts say 30 is the best time to start Botox. So what happened when Angela Neustatter tried to turn back the clock?
Last month I had my first ever Botox injection. Wincing with anticipation, I tried not to stare into the mirror as the liquid flowed from syringe to skin and I had crossed that irreversible line from ‘natural’ to ‘done’. Plenty of people have Botox. But not me. I am 74, happily married, a mother of two very grown-up boys and a grandmother of three. I’m also someone who had prided herself on resisting the siren call of the needle, while friends smoothed brows and tightened crow’s feet. so why this sudden change of heart? the answer is simple. While my body is in pretty good shape, thanks to Pilates and yoga, I’d become increasingly aware that the face in the mirror resembled an Ordnance survey map of lines.
the wrinkles on my forehead seemed to have dug in and be pointing down like arrows. Under my eyes, fine lines were heading south at an alarming rate. Others went from nose to mouth, and down from
the mouth as though dissecting my chin. It wasn’t so much that I looked old, but that I looked weary and dreary and bad-tempered. I did not want that to be me. I shared the lament of Gypsy Rose Lee: ‘I have everything I had 20 years ago, except now it’s all lower’.
Yet I was also aware, alas, that I was a particularly old Botox first-timer. After all, women are often told to start the treatment in their 30s, in order to stop wrinkles from forming. In our 40s and 50s Botox is said to stop lines from becoming imprinted, and in one’s 60s a few ccs of botulinum toxin can take the edge off an already deeply etched crevasse.
But what about the Botox virgin in her 70s? Very little is said about her. Is it simply too old to make a difference? Is there an age and stage when it is either unwise or totally pointless to go for a tweakment?
I ask Dr tracy Mountford of the Cosmetic Skin Clinic, who I’m very pleased to hear has clients in their 90s. ‘If someone aims to look 30 years younger, I tell them I can’t do it,’ she says. ‘there are no medical reasons why older women shouldn’t have treatments, but the effects are more subtle.
‘If skin has thinned a lot, I take that into account and do fillers slowly to achieve smooth results. the women I treat all say they are empowered by feeling they are the best versions of themselves.’
In fact, I am joining an increasing number of baby boomers opting for a pepped-up face, with fillers to plump and improve skin, as well as Botox to freeze lines. (the difference between the two types of injectables is that Botox stops a muscle from moving, so is used to tackle issues caused by repeated muscle movement or tension, while fillers replace lost volume and stimulate collagen production.)
We are, according to research from the Pensions Advisory Service, even dipping into pension funds to pay for procedures. And while younger women opt for body treatments, over-55s tend to focus on the face.
that said, it does take me several weeks to pluck up the courage to ring Dr Sarah tonks. A friend, who looks particularly good for her age, recommended her to me, and Dr tonks’s ten years of medical training and specialisation in cosmetic treatment inspire confidence. I also like her chatty down-to-earth manner.
She seems unfazed by my age — indeed 30 per cent of her clients are over 50, including an 80-year-old woman who looked ‘fabulous’ after having fillers and is now a regular.
However, she’s also quick to tell me that I’m well past the optimum time to begin Botox. She advises starting in your mid-30s in order to stop frown lines from becoming deep and embedded, as mine have. She uses Botox in fine facial lines, crows feet and the forehead, yet insists I mustn’t hope for a brow smooth enough to skate on, just a little softening.
WHAt about risks? Being older, provided you are healthy and can heal well, is not a problem, Dr tonks says. But although it is rare, anyone can get bruising, swelling, infection, hypersensitivity and ‘in very rare cases, occlusion of a blood vessel’ (when filler, injected in a small facial artery, causes a blockage, so the filler has to be dissolved).
‘Botox can help with the forehead and fine lines, but fillers are often the most important part of what I use, as they re-inflate tissue where volume has been lost,’ Dr tonks adds. ‘this usually starts around the eyes, the front cheek, temple and so on.’
She tells me this while drawing lines around the parts of my face where volume loss has led
Ageism is real. Looking like a Giles cartoon granny can get in the way of work, social life and, well, being the person you want to be Cosmetic interventions in the UK are now worth more than £3.6 bn
to drawnin cheeks, hollowing under the eyes and deep lines at the side of my face.
She is preparing the places where she will inject hyaluronic acid, which hydrates and inflates tissue, and platelet rich plasma, which will minimise the appearance of undereye wrinkles. Profhilo (a hyaluronic acid dermal filler that improves the skin — a bit like injectable moisturiser) will also be going into the rings around my neck.
She says I will need three sessions over three months, as I haven’t had treatment before. It will all cost £5,000. The Botox lasts for three to four months, while for the filler it’s about nine to 18 months. The plumping from fillers which bond with our natural collagen does not wholly disappear for about a year andahalf, and has a buildup effect. If I want to keep up the look then I need to return every three to six months for Botox, and every nine to 18 months for fillers. I am no fan of injections, but I am surprised by how little the procedure hurts. At the end of each fourminute session, the only signs that the needle has gone into my face many times are a couple of small bruises around the chin and a bit of swelling, which makes my face a bit chipmunkish. I have not had Botox or substantial fillers before, but this is not the first time I have had cosmetic help. In my early 40s, when I was juggling two riotous sons and a demanding job, while doing up a wreck of a house, my exhaustion levels were off the scale. It showed in my eyes, which seemed to slip into a sandwich of loose skin. I looked like a lizard. I was told cosmetic surgery was the only thing that would help, so I had skin removed from the top and bottom of my eyelids. It brought my eyes back into my face.
In those days, feminists didn’t admit to tampering with nature, but I use my eyes a lot to communicate and had stopped feeling confident in doing so.
I am well aware that wanting cosmetic procedures to remove the evidence of a life lived is a dangerous route to the overdone effect.
There are plenty of cautionary tales: Melanie Griffith, the Leslie Ash ‘trout pout’, or the plasticised look of Joan Rivers, who had the chutzpah to admit: ‘I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.’
Following the backlash I got after my eyelift treatment, I also know that wanting to improve your looks — vanity, if you like — is often met with opprobrium. Why can’t we accept ourselves? Don’t we love the wrinkles and crinkles as trophies of all we have done? Why disguise the story of our lives?
In my own defence, what’s the use in that when the story is too overlaid with markings to be read? I value what I have done with my life and don’t aspire to the impossible dream of looking years younger than I am.
But nor do I love the idea of resembling a passion fruit in its shell, all wrinkles and deep lines — no matter how tasty the inside might be.
It’s the desire to present ourselves as ‘the best calling card possible’, as top cosmetic dermatologist Dr Tapan Patel puts it. At his London PhI Clinic, he does nonsurgical treatments with ‘a far larger toolkit than we had a few years ago’.
he says he has loyal clients in their 80s, who are not trying to look radically different, but want a face that looks fresh and bright. ‘Ageing is not a level playing field. Some age far earlier than others and they don’t want to be disadvantaged.’
This is surely the point. The human race has done what it can to enhance its appearance for millennia, but now there is more to it. We are likely to live decades longer than before, and it is a simple truth that looking like a Giles cartoon granny can get in the way of work and social opportunities and, well, being the person you want to be.
AGeISM is real and it can be very difficult if your mind is as sharp as ever and your abilities are intact, but your face suggests otherwise. It may not be fair, but that’s how it is.
Besides, why is getting Botox any more vain than sweating through a Pilates class five days a week, wearing makeup to flatter and disguise, or splashing out on a figureshaping party dress?
Whatever anyone else may say as I go public with my face, my husband likes the result and says my cheeks are as girlish as they were when he first met me (an exaggeration for sure, as I was 29 then!).
he even wondered whether he should have a bit of a fillip, too, but I squashed that one fast. I’m not into competitive tweakments and, anyway, he is for ever being told how young he looks.
When I saw my friend, a beauty expert not unacquainted with the Botox needle herself, she gave a shriek of delight: ‘Your skin looks really smooth and you now have a lovely curve to your cheek.’
My glamourpuss Spanish daughterinlaw said I look no older than 50 and that she wanted to look just as I do when she is my age — but she only saw me on FaceTime.
Other friends didn’t spot that I’d had anything done, but several have told me how well I look and said my eyes seem brighter.
And, most importantly, i like the results. My face feels perkier, I feel more like smiling, and I find myself putting on silky summer dresses rather than my usual trousers and Tshirts. I feel as though a new confidence has been injected into me with the fillers and Botox — just in time for that 75th birthday.