Young women need greater self-esteem, not tweakments

Out for lunch recently, I’ve observed a number of young women. I found I had to make a very conscious effort not to stare, because some of them, to my eye, look slightly strange.
All were basically lovely girls, but their facial features were enhanced by what are called tweakments, non-surgical treatments. Big lips, sculpted cheeks, statement eyebrows and hair extensions.
I gave myself a shake for being judgmental. And snobbish. I needed to get out more. This, in an age of Instagram and TikTok, influencers and selfies, was how young women groomed their faces, just as my generation plucked our eyebrows to extinction.
And then I thought, nope, this isn’t good. Because these women did not look more beautiful, secure in themselves — they looked a little miserable and harmed, with their unnatural lips and puffy cheeks. Nothing as bad as poor, damaged Katie Price, but smooth and frozen, like Barbie dolls.
Is this what progress looks like for women? To be exploited by a ruthless, unregulated industry? Millions of women obviously feel they’re not attractive unless they subject themselves to injections of lip filler, microbladed eyebrows (rows of tiny needles injecting pigment in templated shapes) and an enhanced bone structure, to the point of physical risk.
The present set-up is described as the Wild West by insurance companies and doctors, who have seen complaints and problems rising threefold since 2017. Some of the disaster stories would make you cry.
Young women need more self-esteem, not injections of hyaluronic acid or — the latest crank — salmon sperm. Some are wealthy enough to pay for subtle tweakments, the ones you don’t notice. But many more are not, and they’re victims.
A cartoon in Private Eye last week made me laugh out loud. It showed a mother with her arm round a boy in dungarees. “We’re very proud of Josh,” she boasts to a friend. “He’s the first member of the family not to go to university.”
We’ve got some building going on. One tradesman drives a brand new £80,000 Discovery, others have Teslas and Range Rovers. Even their vans are younger than our cars. Forget about university clearing, children. I’ve seen the evidence. Get a tool kit.
The famous 1980s thriller Fatal Attraction is on Netflix at the moment — the seminal bunny boiler movie. If you ever want a laugh, quietly observe a married man, any married man, watching it. He will wince, blanch and slide down his seat; he will gawp, eyes wide with horror at the worst bits. I had forgotten quite how scary it was, the ultimate morality play to put a man off an affair.
But then other movies of the time were also moralistic: Blue Velvet, Kramer v Kramer, Sophie’s Choice and of course Indecent Proposal, in which a billionaire played by Robert Redford asks a happily married young woman, played by Demi Moore, to sleep with him for a million dollars. We used to play an abstract game at supper parties about what kind of price we would ask for. To pay the mortgage off, mainly.
Sophie’s Choice also stars on the Sunday Times list of 100 bestselling books from the past 50 years. What splendid, fun social history it was, a reflection of a sensible, striving but not wildly intellectual nation with a weakness for misery lit, worried about having thunder thighs. I must be proudly middle-brow — as are most of my bookshelves, some books inherited from my parents (Diary of an Edwardian Lady, Bronowski’s Ascent of Man and James Herriot) and many mine alone. Though I definitely don’t have the Rosemary Conley Hip and Thigh books. I preferred Jane Fonda.
@Mel_ReidTimes