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This
Old Face After 50, it's all about maintenance
Letting go is not an option. Like an
old house, you'll deteriorate and end up living in a dump
A woman's life is marked by various
stages of coming to terms with reality. These stages always start with
denial, as in: Other people may get cellulite, but not me. Or wishful
thinking, as in: I could run a marathon if I really wanted to, and maybe
some day I will.
Then, one day, you look down at your
thighs and there it is. You realize that, like every other woman, you are
destined to wrinkle and grow old, no matter what you do. It occurs to you
that you'll never run that marathon, either. In fact, you're happy you can
still run for the bus. You realize you might as well throw out the jeans you
grew out of at the age of 32 because you're never going to lose those extra
20 pounds. Your self-improvement days are over. Now you're going to need a
lot of discipline just to hold the line. After 50, it's all about
maintenance.
Getting older is like living in an old
house. It's amazing how much time and money you have to spend just to keep
it from falling apart. You're constantly surprised by hidden problems that
have been years in the making. One day, the plumber discovers tree roots
growing through your drainpipes and, the next day, you're spending $8,000 to
get your yard dug out and the pipes replaced. Or the dentist finds a big
hole in your gums and goes, "Uh oh." And for the first time in
your life, you're wondering whether your dental insurance covers implants.
(Note they don't say "false teeth" any more. They say
"implants.")
Needless to say, holding the line is a
hot topic among my girlfriends. When we were in our 30s, we took a high
moral tone about aging, and deplored the sorts of women who were so
self-obsessed and needy that they turned to plastic surgery. Now that we are
in our 50s, we have a different view. A little bit of it is not so bad, so
long as you still look natural. We don't want to look 25 again, we tell each
other. We simply want to look incredibly fabulous for our age, like, say,
Barbara Amiel.
For a while now, I've been wondering
whether I should do something about the new lines on my face -- the ones you
can see the moment I stop smiling. These lines are just like cellulite, in
that I thought I'd never get them but I did anyway. Unlike my cellulite,
however, they are more public. So I asked my hairdresser, who is an expert
on these things. He told me there is an amazing new procedure that gives you
a face tuck by pulling the droopy skin up through your ears. He had it done
himself, and I have to say he looks quite good. The trouble is, this
procedure costs about as much as a small car.
What to do? I decided to consult my
friend Debra, who knows all about anti-aging creams and potions. She once
talked me into buying a tiny bottle of super-moisturizer to put on the skin
under my eyes. It cost $105, and I was so afraid to use it that now, 15
years later, I still have some. Last week, I had dinner with her, and I
noticed she was looking extremely rested and refreshed. "That's because
I go to Dr. G," she said. "Restylane. Botox. Much cheaper than a
facelift."
Secretly, I've always looked down at the
Botox crowd. But Debra did look good. The next day, I made an appointment to
see Dr. G, who has an office downtown so people can drop in for injections
on their lunch hour.
As I cooled my heels in Dr. G's
tastefully appointed waiting room, I read up on all the treatments you can
get. There's Nectifirm, which promises a "48 per cent increase in
firmness in 28 days," and is good for turkey neck. There's IPL Photo
Rejuvenation, Microdermabrasion, Photodynamic Therapy, Glycolic Peels, and
something called Thermage, which uses radio frequency energy to shrink-wrap
your face. I felt as if I had discovered a whole new world of unmet needs.
"I want you to renew, refresh, and
revitalize me," I told Dr. G. He recommended some filler and a little
Botox, plus several treatments to take care of my blotchy skin and red nose.
The filler was something called Juvederm. He asked whether I'd like to be
filled up right away; I said yes, of course. He drew a few lines on my face
with a pen, froze my lips and chin, and injected me with many needles.
"This resculpts you from within," he promised, massaging my lower
face from the inside of my mouth. After he was done, he gave me a mirror. It
was hard to tell how much I had been resculpted, because my frozen lips had
swollen to twice their normal size. "You'll look like a duck for an
hour or two," he said. He also said I might drool. I forked over $2,071
and booked an appointment in two weeks to rejuvenate my blotchy skin.
The trouble with being over 50 is that
your maintenance schedule gets more and more demanding, and you're always
falling more and more behind. You've got the manicures and pedicures and
facials, the exercise classes and the chiropractor, the colonoscopies and
mammograms, the hair cuts and the colouring, the dentist and the
periodontist and, now, the Botox. You need a growing number of support
people just to keep you upright and presentable.
It's occurred to me that, if I attended
to all these duties faithfully, there'd be hardly any time to have a life.
But letting go is not an option, either. Like an unmaintained old house,
you'll deteriorate awfully fast, and pretty soon you'll be living in a dump.
After my mouth started to unfreeze, I
phoned my husband to tell him I'd dipped into our maintenance fund. I told
him not to be alarmed just because I look like a drooling duck. I'm sure the
swelling will go down. Besides, as Debra says, it's much cheaper than a
facelift. - by Margaret Wente
THE
GLOBE AND MAIL 3 February 2007
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