Through the Ages: An Honest Review of a Sagging Face

My drooping face has been on my mind lately. I’d like to say I’ve reached an age (48 today) where these things just don’t matter; that I’ve become wise and zen and mature - no longer vain and troubled by something as trifling as a sagging face. But that’s simply not the case. The question of age and ageing interests me a lot. I am surrounded in Singapore with almost predominately younger women. My business collaborators are all five to ten years younger than me - in some cases younger still.

I have one friend here who is thankfully my age - and thank goodness for her because she is my touchstone - the person I turn to when the worry about getting older rears it’s head and needs some understanding. We rely on each other for soothing words that only a female friend can give. A conversation between us might go something like this “I’m so hot at the moment…are you feeling really hot too? oh god, I’m worried I’m starting menopause” before either one of us says to the other “it’s OK, you are not starting menopause. I’m hot too, we live in Singapore for goodness sake - it’s bloody boiling!” We seem to take it in turns to have these conversations, about menopause, about our sagging faces or increasingly soft tummys. And over time I have noticed that worrying about ageing is related far more to a general state of mind than to anything specific.

Day to day we actually look exactly the same. Of course we are ageing but it is happening slowly, over years, not overnight. So why do we sometimes look at ourselves in the mirror with horror at what stares back? Last week I might have been feeling totally fine, attractive even, and days later I catch myself in the mirror and wonder what on earth has gone wrong. In these moments I’m filled with a longing to remove the signs of ageing that seem to have taken up residence on my face. Mention this (most glaringly obvious change) to a friend or husband and they will generally say “you look totally fine - what are you talking about?” And there’s the rub. What is reflected back to us in the mirror is how we feel on the inside and not necessarily a change on the outside. Maybe we are feeling tired, or stressed, or just a bit down. Maybe we haven’t been eating well recently or drinking too much and not exercising enough, all of these things add up to how we feel about ourselves. It goes without saying that over time not taking care of your wellbeing will actually show up on your face as ageing, but in the short term that internal “not feeling very sparky” feeling is what looks back at us in the mirror. Which is one of the reasons why, to date, I have not taken any steps to address my ageing face or body. Is it just that I’m feeling a bit average? I don’t want to go down an unnecessary path if all I needed to do was go for a run and get some sleep.

There are so many options now when it comes to beauty and ageing. A lot or a little, you can fix whatever is bothering you. And even though sometimes I wish to have a younger face I have not chosen to do any cosmetic procedures - yet (let’s not totally shut the door on the idea totally). I have thought about it and I will probably go on thinking about it - it is so tantalisingly available, a quick panacea to erase everything that I don’t like, but I’m not sure I will ever take that leap. I worry that I would be looking for a quick solution rather than tackling a bigger issue around why I think I look old (see above). I also worry about starting and not being able to stop. Does anyone do a little botox? Or filler just once? Rarely. Usually it becomes a periodic requirement - something you now need to feel you look good.

I worry about the health implications, about injecting something that has no medical benefit inside my body regularly. And lastly, I like that my husband and I are growing old together. We met when we were in our mid 20’s and we still see this youthfulness in one another. We are not blind to our ageing, but it’s not what we see first and it’s not what matters. There is something very lovely about going through these phases of life together. Both of us have our own gender based ageing issues but we are in it together. One of us isn’t sneaking off to erase those signs and leaving the other stranded on wrinkle rock without a paddle.

In any case, it’s unlikely I would ever have an anti-ageing cosmetic procedure to please my husband - it would be to please myself and if I’m honest, it would be to feel the positive appraisal of other women. A “wow, you look amazing!” from a female friend or acquaintance is a powerful and uplifting endorsement that most women cherish. In terms of compliments, those from other women are often at the top. And after a certain age, anyone exclaiming at how old you are because they thought you were much younger is surely the jackpot of all compliments.

If I was to consider attending to anything cosmetic I think it would be to remove the tiny spider veins that are creeping all over the place. these I think I could tackle happily.

There is plenty more I could do. I have big eyes and my upper eyelids are dropping on to my lower eyelids. I didn’t realise this was happening until I had coffee with a friend a few years ago. While we were chatting she made a funny joke and then turned to me and said “just so you know I just raised my eyebrows. I’m letting you know in case they didn’t go up - I just had botox”. It was the perfect way to laughingly tell me she’d had work done. It turns out her eyelids had been drooping (as mine do) and when she described the feeling of it, it all of a sudden dawned on me that was what I was experiencing too (up until that point I had always thought I had a thread or a hair stuck on my eyelid and kept trying to wipe it away, not realising the sensation was actually my upper eyelid dropping). And this is just the start of what is happening. Basically my face is falling. I wonder, will I eventually just have skin hanging loose off my jaw? I guess so. My neck got so wobbly a year or so ago that I actually found myself playing with it and marvelling at how gross the floppy skin felt. I hated it but I was also drawn to it’s soft pliability. What else? My eyebrows have not seen a pair of tweezers for a good year now. Not only is there no more stray hairs that need removing, what remains is thinning. I never thought that would happen. I’ve always had decently thick eyebrows and have never over plucked them. And yet, here they are thinning themselves on my behalf. To be honest it would have been better if they’d figured out this trick 10 years ago when I was paying for threading.

On the flip side I am growing hair on my chin and upper lip at a rate that requires weekly plucking. A friend in Australia recently revealed she keeps a pair of tweezers in her handbag at all times due to the aggressive growth of facial hair that needs almost hourly removal. And let’s not get started with the marionette lines that extend from the edge of my nose down past the corners of my mouth. I am becoming jowly. And my lower face is starting to resemble my Dads. I think he looks handsome, but he is in his mid 70’s and a man - I am a 40 something woman, jowls are not becoming. And of course I am going gray - but this I am thankfully spared full knowledge of as long as I keep up my blond colour.

This ageing process is a continuum. I find it perplexing when someone in their 30’s worries about their ageing face and in turn, I realise that those older than me will similarly think “you haven’t seen anything yet - stop worrying". And so I try and hang on to that idea. You can choose to see an ageing face today, or you can choose to see a youthful one. Both are accurate. I look the oldest I ever have at this point because I’ve never been this old before but I am sure 20 years from now I will look back at this time and think “look how young I looked!” This is how I try and keep perspective on it.

Easier said than done when I spend a lot of time on social media for work and Instagram is full of younger looking faces. I often chuckle at the plethora of videos of younger women showing me how to use a stone to massage my face or doing face yoga (for the uninitiated this involves pulling faces and pushing and pulling your face upwards to stop the inevitable face drop). What makes me laugh is not that they are taking these preventative steps, but just that they are so young, so the rubbing of the stone over the face seems somewhat unnecessary. Nothing moves while they do it - the stone just kind of glides over taut skin. If I was to rub a stone up my face there would be folds and folds of skin rolling upward. It would look nothing like these glowing youthful faces on Instagram. And it’s unlikely me pushing my skin upwards will actually stop it dropping - I’m pretty sure gravity is stronger than the odd upward massage.

I wish I had more faces of my age to see in the media. Faces that look the age they are. It seems a shame to me that we are so unrepresented. For my part, when I show myself on Instagram, I try to do so in a realistic way. To let you see me as I am - sometimes (often) without makeup, rarely with my hair done - just me, a 48 year old woman. I am hoping that what I say will be of more importance than my ageing face. Plus I don’t see anything wrong with a normal unfiltered, no make up face. I have noticed in the past year an increase in showing realistic bodies and faces on social media and I hope this trend continues.

I am also grateful that few of my friends have undertaken cosmetic procedures, I think getting older would be made harder still if I was the only one not turning to a cosmetic cure. And perhaps my resolve would weaken if I was the last one left. I remember reading an article by a British fashion journalist who was in her early 50s and was the only one in her workplace to have no work done. She describes being in meetings and attending industry events and her face being so thoroughly out of place in a room full of augmented features.

There is no right or wrong way to age. All of us will choose our own path and many of us will waiver along the way and change our mind. All options are valid. I reject the phrase “ageing gracefully” there is nothing particularly graceful about this ageing process and in any case, being graceful in life belongs to us all. Deciding to not use cosmetic procedures to alter an ageing face is not a badge of honour, it is just a personal choice like any other, and any judgement of other choices should be left at the door. When all is said and done we are all hoping to navigate our way through the many changes in life the best we can and in a way that makes us feel good - it’s all we can do.

Now for goodness sake don’t let me open my phone with the camera on and see my face literally falling towards the lens.