‘Ladies, this may come as a surprise. The ageing process does not start at 50 – it starts at 20 or 21, when the first fine lines appear under our eyes.’
Those harsh words were coming from our lecturer on the beauty course I’d just joined, a stone’s throw from London’s Bond Street.
The year was 1983, I was 21 myself and the message couldn’t have been clearer: it was all downhill for me from now on. I’d soon look like an old lady. Much worse, the lecturer added: ‘And there’s nothing we can do about it.’
Of course, back then, as Madonna shimmied her way through Holiday on Top Of The Pops and the Trimphone in the hallway was the nearest we got to social media, we knew no better. Our mums might have doused themselves in Nivea at night, or splashed out on Oil of Olay, as it then was, but that was about it.
More than 40 years later and the beauty industry is unrecognisable – literally. The faces we once expected to have at the age of 50 or 60 have been replaced with the strange smoothness of Botoxed skin, filler-injected lips and tightly sculpted jawlines. Just look at Madonna.
Forget the doom-laden ladies of Bond Street – today, beauty is a multibillion-pound industry run by doctors, celebrities and venture capitalists. Aesthetic tweakments such as Botox and fillers were worth around £3.2billion to the UK economy alone last year and the sector is still growing fast.
The British Beauty Council’s Value of Beauty 2025 report recently revealed the industry was growing four times faster than the wider economy, taking its overall value to £30.4billion and, for the first time, Brits are spending more on beauty than going to the gym, football and amusement parks trips combined. And yet, the more I see of it, the more I wonder where it’s leading – and where the dignity of ageing has gone.
For a start, it’s expensive to maintain, and means women are paying a hefty penalty for just, well, getting older. A smooth forehead can cost upwards of £135, lasting about four months before a top up is needed. Frown lines and crow’s feet are the same, each, while a ‘lip flip’ – where Botox turns the top lip upwards – starts at around £100 and has to be done at least twice a year.
Ulla Kloster’s simple hack means she is still mistaken for 40 at the age of 62
Is it any wonder injectors are on constant look-out for ‘new’ lines to plump on our face, hands, knees, cleavage and bottom?
New flaws must be constantly ‘discovered’ and new ‘fixes’ offered. Some years ago I recall a friend of mine, over lunch, pointing at her perfect chin and saying: ‘Look, my surgeon says there’s a tiny bump here. He said he could file a bit off the bone to get a symmetric jawline.’
And then there are the botched treatments which render women droopy, one-sided or weirdly ‘surprised’ or frozen – or even worse.
I fear for future generations of women and the pressure on them to have a line-free face, let alone what effect all this might have on the NHS.
The UK aesthetic tweakments industry is considered a Wild West even though Botox is a prescription drug that should only be administered after a face-to-face consultation with a healthcare professional. But too many people either ignore or are unaware of the few rules currently in place, warns Sally Taber, a former nurse and a trustee of the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners, which is a self-regulating body for the non-surgical cosmetic industry. ‘Some people inject each other in their homes or in garden sheds. They get Botox from places such as Korea, which is completely irresponsible.’
What has happened to the concept of ageing gracefully? Where, really, is the dignity in looking 16 when you’re 69, like US reality TV personality Kris Jenner, mother of Kim Kardashian?
In my view, it is the tragi-comedy of our age: young women, some already paying back student loans or struggling to get on the housing ladder, now being seduced or bullied out of their spare cash for a smoother forehead.
Indeed, looking back at that Mayfair beauty college, I hanker for those simpler times.
Ladies – as my lecturer always called us – here’s the thing: beauty does not have to be so complex and there are easier ways to look fresher.
I’m 62 and yet many people kindly give me the benefit of the doubt when I say I’m not far off 50. What do I do? Ironically, I follow one game-changing little tip that came from that lecturer in the early 1980s, whose voice I can hear even now. ‘Even if we cleanse our face every night, we speed up the ageing process because tap water dries the skin,’ she said, ‘unless we use spring water, which is softer.’
How right she was. In my opinion, calcium in tap water has a drying effect on the fine skin on our face. The water from our taps may also contain chlorine and magnesium, which can strip away natural oils and lead to dryness. And, in fact, this can hinder the skin’s ability to keep in moisture and speed up the signs of ageing.
You only have to look inside your kettle, covered in limescale, to understand how potent the minerals in tap water are. Poorly maintained pipes and storage also mean we don’t know what else might be lurking in the water coming out of our taps.
That goes for filtered water, too – we can’t always be sure how often a filter is changed or how effective it is, although the dry and tight feeling it leaves the skin is a clue that something is not right. People with sensitive skin are particularly vulnerable to inflammatory diseases such as eczema or blocked pores that tap water can cause.
For more than 40 years, bottled water has been the most important beauty product I use (one such as Volvic or Evian, bought for about 72p from the supermarket). I see little point in slapping expensive designer moisturisers on skin that’s been bathed in calcium and chlorine as any benefits are undermined from the start.
Here’s what I do:
l Cleanse my face (using Pond’s cold cream make-up remover);
l Wipe off the cleanser with dry cotton wool pads;
l Remove the remaining cleanser and hydrate with a cotton wool pad soaked in Volvic;
l Moisturise using – yes! – Oil of Olay (also for 40 years);
l Finally, tap gently under my eyes with a finger dipped in Vaseline to seal the area.
This routine is not a quick fix, but it’s painless and cheap. And I always do it at the end of the day, no matter how tired I feel.
My only concession to modern beauty treatments is Chanel’s Hydra Beauty Micro Serum (£84 for 30ml, but a little goes a long way, applied before the Olay). And, as an occasional treat, Creme de la Mer’s moisturiser. And that’s it.
I grew up in Denmark and the Nordic culture certainly gives a healthy ‘less-is-more’ outlook on life. That mantra holds true for Scandi fashion, interiors and even the famed ‘hygge’ concept which prioritises the simple things we all know really matter in life.
Now I’ve turned my easy lessons into a mini-blog called thescandilook.com. It’s about being cool rather than cute and making the best of what we have rather than altering it.
Yes, I have lines on my forehead and in my teens I obsessed over my bumpy nose, but there it is. Those are really first-world problems, so when people take me
for a 40 or a 50-year-old I’m delighted and certainly do not correct them.
I never did work as a beauty therapist. I took the course because, back then, I was interested in make-up and looking great at parties, but I had other career hopes which included working at the Daily Mail.
I don’t regret dropping out of the beauty business, despite the extraordinary fortunes some practitioners now make out of tweakments – but I do regret worrying about ageing in my early 20s. What a waste of time and precious youth!
The real lesson surely is not to worry. Fewer lines that way.
