It was a Eureka! moment. A revelation. It was as though my entire belief system, my daily rituals, had been shattered. I felt exactly as a five-year-old might upon being told that Father Christmas does not exist, or the Archbishop of Canterbury upon being shown incontrovertible proof there is no God. I felt betrayed and duped.
It happened as I sat in my cosmetic surgeon’s consulting room at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in North London in March this year.
I was firing questions at Alex Karidis, a world-renowned surgeon and a man who has spent decades transforming the faces of the rich and the famous, as well as helping the disfigured and the injured.
The anti-ageing creams on which I have spent thousands of pounds (at this point I was spending £400 a month), I was told, would never help me look younger.
I was about to undergo cosmetic surgery. These were the procedures on the clipboard in front of me that the surgeon would be performing later that afternoon.
First, a general anaesthetic. Next, blepharoplasty, which meant the puffy flesh beneath my eyes would be excised, as well as the arc of crevasses beneath, which never did respond to YSL’s Touche Eclat concealer.
Dermaroller would follow, involving thousands of tiny holes being made in the skin around my mouth. Blood taken from my arm would then be injected into these holes. My skin, thinking it is under attack, which it most definitely is, would be stimulated into producing that all-important plumping collagen — the stuff that makes our skin look youthful, but production of which falls off, particularly after the menopause.
And finally a full facelift, which would involve incisions behind my ears, snaking several inches up into my hair, as well as incisions inside my ears, a thought that made me feel faint.
My face was to be pulled up, rectifying the hamster pockets that had collected the fat fallen from my cheeks, and the turkey wobble beneath my chin. A few weeks later I would have Botox injected into my forehead and filler injected into any remaining Mel Gibson tramlines running from nose to mouth.
The surgery should last a decade, the Botox and filler lasting anything up to six months.
‘Your heart-shaped face and jawline will return,’ Mr Karidis told me reassuringly, cupping my face in his hands, forcing me to look in a mirror as he did so.
My bare face was in the unrelenting glare of the spring sunshine. When his hands fell away and I saw my face drop, the dire warnings on the consent form — that I might die under the anaesthetic, that my eyes might droop, my sight might be permanently blurred, my hair fall out, my face feel permanently numb — paled in comparison to the stark reality of my 52-year-old face staring back at me, sad and undeniably old.
My main emotion at this point was one of shock, but also that it was all so unfair! How on earth did this happen to me?
Why, I’d asked him almost in tears, has my face fallen? Why do my eyes resemble those of a wrinkly Shar Pei puppy? Why are my lips so thin and mean-looking when I have spent a lifetime plastering my skin with expensive unguents?
And so, just hours before my major surgery was due to begin, came the moment when the likes of Clarins and Revive and Zelens and Dr Hauschka — my gods — were condemned as mere mirages.
‘Skin creams will not have made any difference,’ my surgeon told me. ‘The only thing you can do for your skin is stay out of the sun, not smoke or drink alcohol, and pray your parents gave you good genes.
‘No cream is capable of lifting this … ’ he said, placing those cool hands on my drooping, melting face again.
I was shocked. Particularly as earlier this month a survey of 3,000 women found we spend more than £24,000 in a lifetime fighting wrinkles. Four in ten spent an average of £20 to £50 a month on wrinkle creams, although 45 per cent said they were unhappy with the results.
I have spent a great deal more than £24,000 on skincare products in my lifetime. I started very young with my addiction to, my adoration of, beauty products.
As a teenager I used Boots No7 creams, but by my early 20s I had already graduated to Clinique’s three-step cleanse, tone and moisturise regime (the yellow soap in its green drawer still makes me feel nostalgic for my youth).
As soon as I got a better job, I graduated to Clarins — an addiction that left me permanently broke and sometimes unable to afford food (my surgeon also told me good nutrition, and not being too thin, can only help our faces).
Over the years, the products I used became more and more expensive, culminating in the Revive range, developed by a surgeon who had worked with burns victims. I used its Lip Renewal Cream, £72, its Fluide Superbe for dry skin, £250, its Volumising Serum to plump my skin, £370, and its Blanche cream, £250.
I used to spend £400 a month on creams and facials and nothing worked.
If they had worked, I wouldn’t have been in need of a facelift. I wouldn’t have done this to myself. (I should add here that I have never smoked and I drink little. I’ve always drunk so much water I slosh as I walk.)
The beauty industry is remarkably inventive, even more seductive and clever than the fashion industry. And magazines and beauty journalists work far too closely with the big beauty brands.
If the feature you are reading now were to be published in a glossy women’s magazine, it would be suicidal: advertising revenue from the likes of L’Oreal and Chanel would plummet, just as the fat in my cheeks migrated south.
Elle has a piece in its August issue that backs up claims from the big beauty houses that ‘creams promise results to rival the surgeon’s knife’.
The beauty journalist writes: ‘Clinique’s Repairwear Laser Focus, a serum that targets sun damage and fine lines, promises results comparable to a laser treatment.’ Clinique’s Pore Refining Solutions range is billed as ‘an alternative to micro-dermabrasion’.
The article also proclaims: ‘Serums remain one of the most effective means of pushing active ingredients into the skin.’
It adds that a cream can be 70 per cent as effective in eradicating dark spots and red veins as IPL (Intense Pulse Light, which I also had about six weeks after my surgery to eradicate broken capillaries on my face, two patches of sun damage beneath my right eye and the tiny brown spots on my hands, which now look so weirdly old that I no longer place them anywhere near my new face).
According to Mr Karidis, and to the evidence writ large on my pre-surgery face that had never gone a day since my teens without being protected by the best products on the market, this is all nonsense.
But the magazine insists sternly: ‘The right skincare regime is essential.’
Of course it is. I mustn’t slap my forehead with my wrinkly old hand, as I need to avoid disturbing the Botox currently lurking there, neatly preventing me from frowning at the glossy pages.
The magazine helpfully gives us a shopping list: Pore Refining Solutions Correcting Serum, £36.50, by Clinique. Regenessence Youth Regeneration Serum, £85, by Giorgio Armani. Hydra Life Skin Perfect, £48, by Dior. Pores No More Pore Refiner, £39, by Dr Brandt. The list goes on and on and on.
Finally, the magazine also asserts that if you must have surgery, then there is a battery of products you simply must buy — containing marine extracts, algaes for lifting and tightening, peptide complexes — to use religiously after your procedure.
When the bandages (and the scales) are finally lifted from my eyes three days after surgery, I put this next question to my surgeon.
What should I use now to make sure it doesn’t all happen again?
To make sure that all the pain and the nausea (I react very badly to general anaesthetic, and had thrown up for days after surgery) were worth it?
Again, Mr Karidis disabuses me of my belief system. ‘The only thing I want you to do after surgery is to wear a factor 50 sun block and to smile more often! Stress and too much exercise add years to your face.’
So, I’ve become less precious. I always wear SPF 50 and use Ren skincare products, which are much cheaper, and have gone back to Boots’ own-brand creams, which, funnily enough, is where I started.
Yes, of course we want to age differently to the way our mothers and grandmothers did; my mum had false teeth by the time she was 50. But the beauty industry has gone too far, promising us something it can never deliver: youth in a jar.
I now have the words of my cosmetic surgeon ringing in my ears whenever I drift through Selfridges’ seductive beauty halls, surely the cathedrals of our age.
What a much more enjoyable life I would have had, how much richer I’d be now and how much happier in my own skin if I had known then what I know now: stay out of the sun and try to smile every day.
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