I’ve never shied away from complimenting people, so when I recently met up with an old friend for dinner and saw her face looking positively luminous, I immediately told her how fabulous I thought she looked. She blushed and said she had been eating healthier, and the conversation flowed into other subjects. It was only when we got to dessert, and we were both reasonably wined and watered, that she whispered that she had had Botox done.
To be honest, I was surprised, not because she had had the procedure, but because she had opted not to tell me. I told her this, and her reply was simple: “I’ve been judged before, and now I automatically avoid speaking about it even if I know the other person won’t necessarily look at me differently.”
I’ve been thinking about this conversation since then. Cosmetic surgery is a billion-dollar industry – why are so many people still ashamed of openly partaking in it when the standards to look young and fit have become so high?
I think back to my youth when hair serum was still a twinkle in the hair industry’s eye and waging war with body hair was an almost daily occurrence. Back then, if you got a bad hair dye job during summer, no one would particularly care, so much so that it was almost seen as a rite of passage. I can’t see any teenagers doing that now unless they want to make a specific statement. There were fewer cameras on us, which meant that we felt freer to make mistakes and not micromanage our images.
It’s bitterly ironic that “model perfect” has become such a standard way of looking that people feel less and less inclined to speak about the lengths they’ve gone to to achieve the bodies they have. And when people do speak up, they’re shamed for not being born with Gisele Bundchen genetics. Despite so much awareness and inclusivity campaigns, it feels like there’s even less room for age and infirmity than ever before. Everyone looks the same, dresses the same, and treats differences like the plague. Anxiety has taken over like cancer. No one wants to be left behind, no one wants to miss out, and no one wants to talk about it, either. We hide behind staged photos and curated feeds and take ourselves far too seriously. We have become afraid to connect with others in a meaningful way. We are scared of each other.
Amidst all the endless quests for perfection, have we forgotten how to be human?
