Cosmetic Surgery

 

Young Witches at Play in the Night Sky
Ernest Procter (1886-1935)
Photo Credit: Penlee House Gallery & Museum. [CC BY-ND] 

I do not have the bone structure of  [Meryl] Streep and [Anna} Wintour so increasingly look in photos like the Wicked Witch of the West having a stroke. The obvious solution - or at least, the solution touted to women like me as obvious - is to have what is described as "work done". A "touch-up". A "refresh". Which means cosmetic surgery that looks natural (well, on camera, anyway). Such procedures include having your upper eyelids sliced back and fat injected underneath your eyes, known as upper and lower blepharoplasties, often referred to with the cutest name "blephs". Despite sounding like a torture method straight out of A Clockwork Orange, operations like these are now talked about so casually you'd think they were as common as getting your teeth whitened. And maybe they soon will be: every year, rates of cosmetic surgery  in this country continue to climb, the vast majority (over 93 per cent) done on women, with the aforementioned blephs rising an impressive 15 per cent from 2024 to 2025.

I looked up the bleph rates because recently an article was published by Lauren Cody Hoffman, 35, and if I tell you the headline was "Let me deinfluence you from getting a lower blepharoplasty", that should give you an idea of the tone of it. Yes, this was a bleph that went wrong, and for those of a squeamish nature, I'll summarise by quoting two sentences: "excessive scarring meant I could no longer close my eyes" and "Oh my God, I looked better before".

The next day an even longer article was published by Catt Sadler, 51, describing her "facelift journey and specifically what happened after she had a facelift and upper bleph three years ago. Again too long to summarise, but it probably suffices to say that after her surgery she was surprised to discover her earlobes were now attached to her cheeks. And I thought that Dolly Parton was joking when she once said, "If I have one more facelift I'll have a beard."...

As a woman, it feels as though you either have naturally amazing looks which age beautifully; or you give up and risk increased irrelevancy from the age of 45; or you slice up and dice up your face in the hope you'll be treated like a human a little longer.

No wonder Streep and Wintour stayed shtoom, because where's the empowering message in this? I don't blame the players. I just hate the stupid game.

(Hadley Freeman, The Sunday Times, 2026)

Some women are made to feel they need facial surgery through online information, content in magazines, advertisements and the perceived glamour of celebrities. So there is a certain amount of social pressure being applied. However the vast majority of these women are adults with the ability, hopefully, to make decisions for themselves. To take responsibility for their own actions, to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of having such surgery. To make sure they have done their research on the procedures and the professionals who will undertake the work. By the way,  there's a lot going for, and something attractive with, looking like the Wicked Witch having a stroke with unwhitened teeth!