Beauty bible

A firm-looking jawline doesn’t have to involve surgery

Jettison the jowl

Why do people get so uptight about ageing? look at it in t he r ight way, a fairg round-mirror way, and it’s pure c o me d y. I n fa c t , when I ’ ve be e n through what I call ‘an ageing cluster’ ( because cont ra r y to popular belief, ageing doesn’t happen gradually but in clusters: nothing happens for months and then all of a sudden there’s a mass implosion), I have been known to fall about laughing in front of the mirror. of course, the hysterics tend to end in tea rs, f loor-hammering a nd cr ies of ‘Whyyyyy?’ but you get my drift.

Jowls, however, are as unfunny as Italian game shows, replacement bus services and subsidence. They are basically human subsidence, but si nce I will never be prepared to excavate and rebuild my whole face (who has the money, a nd where would your soul reside while all t hat work was being done?), I l au nche d a pr e - e mpt i ve assault on Churchill-dog-face a decade ago using a miracle facial contouring device called Nuface. This little gadget delivers such lifting results (after only f ive minutes of use a day) t hat if you ever fancy giving your friends a belly laugh, you could head down to the pub having done just one side of your face.

I hadn’t even contemplated t r ying anything else until I saw a newly tautjawed friend who had just had her jowls blasted away with a non-invasive ultrasound t reat ment ca lled Ult herapy at london’s renowned Cadogan Clinic. So off I went to consult the Cadogan’s dr Maryam Zamani. She had me at ‘noninvasive face lift’ and ‘zero downtime’ – but lost me again at ‘it feels like being g radually slight ly elect rocuted’. St ill, def initely one to be f iled away in t he ‘when things get much worse’ category. And if t here’s any hope of ending up looking like the ever-youthful Zamani, I’ll do whatever else she recommends. ‘In the end, it’s about investing in your face,’ she says. you ca n’t a rg ue wit h t hat. So where jowlage is concerned, you might want to consider making one of these investments…