Jo Allison is Canvas8’s editorial director. She has a background in fashion journalism and 12 years' experience working in b2b publishing. Before heading up the Canvas8 Library team, Jo was an editor at GDR Creative Intelligence, a retail trends consultancy, where she specialised in luxury shopper behaviours.

From Tumblr blogs dedicated to the lips or bums of the Kardashian clan, to tweets speculating about Meg Ryan’s wrinkle-free face, women in Hollywood are used to having their appearances scrutinised. According to a survey conducted by 

, while grey hair on men seems ‘distinguished’, on women it’s read as being ‘old’ – so it’s no wonder high-profile women often feel pressured to opt for cosmetic procedures to make them appear forever young. 

“Hollywood makes it hard,” says actress Courteney Cox. “I grew up thinking appearance was the most important thing.” It was reported that Cox had facial fillers, but after prolonged use she revealed that chasing the fountain of youth had its consequences, “I was trying so hard to keep up, and that actually made things worse. Now, I’m as natural as I can be.” 

Of course, famous actors are privileged when they age as they have both the money and time to spend on procedures and products. But what about ‘normal women’? Abigail T. Brooks, director of the Women’s Studies Program at Providence College and author of 

The Ways Women Age: Using and Refusing Cosmetic Intervention

, wanted to hear the voices of women outside of Hollywood. She conducted 44 in-depth interviews with women aged 47 to 76 who had used, refused or were undecided on whether to use cosmetic surgeries. “I wanted to discover in what ways growing older now is potentially different than it was for their mothers or grandmothers,” she explains. 

 Canvas8 spoke with Brooks to understand why women feel increasingly pressured to stop time in its tracks.

“My whole purpose in writing the book was to generate conversation and encourage everyday women to think and talk about ageing,” says Brooks. “I’ve watched soap operas since I was young and when I returned to watch them in graduate school, I saw that the faces of the female characters who were 20 or 30 years older than they had been were literally unchanged.” At the same time, she noticed an increase in ads for procedures that ‘fixed’ signs of ageing – things like “wrinkles, and balding, ageing in general, menopause for women,” she says. 

“The drive behind medicalising these kinds of phenomena is that it’s very profitable,” Brooks continues. 

 The anti-ageing business is certainly huge; in 2015, Americans underwent more than 4.2 million Botox procedures, and spending on cosmetic plastic surgery amounted to $15 billion in 2016. 

 “In the US, gynaecologists, dermatologists and optometrists are gleaning their bread and butter from cosmetic procedures, because if the procedure is done just for cosmetic reasons, people have to pay out of pocket for it, so physicians make a big profit. When you go to your general doctor, you’ll often see pamphlets and posters making it obvious that they also provide Botox and Juvederm.” 

If it’s a medical profession that is encouraging women to engage in cosmetic procedures, that brings a whole new layer of legitimacy to these procedures, because we trust our doctors

Although the industry is booming, it’s heavily skewed towards women, who account for 90% of all cosmetic procedures. 

 “It’s in all of the women-centric fashion and lifestyle magazines,” says Brooks. “It’s on television, it’s online. It’s also at your site of medical care. If it’s a medical profession that is encouraging women to engage in cosmetic procedures, that brings a whole new layer of legitimacy to these procedures, because we trust our doctors.” 

The marketing techniques that are used to sell these products are savvy. “It’s amazing, the way the pharmaceutical industries have utilised... second wave feminist language [to] encourage women to have the procedures. Everything from ‘individual freedom of expression’ to ‘find the real you’ – it’s borrowing from feminist ideas.” 

 from Allergen – a manufacturer of Botox – did just this by ‘celebrating personal choices’ around ageing.

Women are opting to fill and plump rather than cut and splice

“One of the huge themes in second wave feminism was that women are more than how we look,” says Brooks. “I’m discouraged by this era we’re in, where I feel like we’re reverting to a time wherein so much of how women are understanding themselves is mediated through how they look.” 

 According to research commissioned by L'Oréal Paris and 

, 44% of American women believe appearance is a key part of identity – more than other lifestyle choices like motherhood, their career, where they grew up, or their religion. 

A recurring theme in Brooks’ data was that women said they “wanted to look like me again.” Respondents would say that they had a “feeling of disconnection between the exterior of their body and their interior, authentic self. A feeling of alienation from your ageing face and body was a very profound theme.” After their procedures, however, Brooks notes that the “women did feel that they looked more like themselves, more like how they used to look, which in their experience was more in the sense of their authentic self.” 

 The underlying message was that it wasn’t so much about looking younger or more attractive, so much as it was about identity.

Brooks believes that social media has a big part to play in this attitude. “We live in such a two-dimensional culture right now,” she says. “So much of how we’re formulating self-worth and constructing our identity is happening via the image and the screen – whether it’s posting images on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.” 

 A survey conducted by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery shows that exposure to, and use of, social media can take a toll on people’s sense of self; a number of under-30s in the US are comparing their appearances to unrealistic ‘Insta-standards’, causing a spike in cosmetic surgeries. 

Looks play a major role in one’s sense of self

One prominent idea among the women Brooks spoke to was that being attractive and attracting the male gaze was a big part of their identity and how they felt good about themselves. “For some women, when they started to not have as much attention for how they looked, that was very hard for them,” says Brooks. “Other women felt that if they didn’t look young anymore, people were not as interested in their minds, were not as interested in their skill sets, were not as interested in their knowledge.” 

 This is echoed in the research from L'Oréal Paris and 

, in which 73% of respondents said being beautiful helps women get ahead at work, and 84% claimed it gives them an overall edge in life. 

“After these women had their procedures done, they really felt like they were back to being taken seriously as people with expertise in their field, that people were interested in hearing what they had to say,” says Brooks, noting that these women’s experiences highlight that we still live in a society where we have what author and activist Susan Sontag called the ’gender double standard of ageing’. 

“For women, our self-worth and our cultural worth and our economic worth are caught up in how we look versus what we do,” says Brooks. “For men, the premier point of value is very much their achievements, what they’ve done, their actions, their contributions outside of appearance. When women and men grow older, men are read as physically attractive at older ages, with wrinkles, with grey hair. Women are not read as physically attractive at older ages, and men are still viewed as individual experts. In some cases, men are more respected and more sought out as they age, whereas women – our minds, our contributions, our expertise – are dismissed.” 

Can you age ‘successfully’ without Botox?

While some women battle with ‘mid-life mirror angst’, others are proudly labelling themselves the ‘ageless generation’ – shopping in the same stores as their daughters, Instagramming pics of their yoga class, and going for monthly injectables. 

 The concept of successful ageing can be traced back to the 1950s, and was popularised in the 1980s. Brooks explains that it refers to physical, mental and social well-being in older age – “continuing to be as youthful as possible, to have a very active lifestyle, to stay in shape physically.” 

Contemporary readings of the term also connect to appearance. “Ageing in that way – being able to a run a marathon at 90 for instance – can be so empowering,” says Brooks. “But the critique from a feminist studies perspective asks why is it not okay to slow down as we age? In other nations outside of the US, like in India and parts of Africa, to grow old is a gift and something that is celebrated.” Discussing the women she interviewed who embraced cosmetic anti-ageing procedures, Brooks says they “would fit into what we call the successful ageing paradigm. For them, it’s really empowering to think of fighting ageing every step of the way.” 

But those who described themselves as ageing naturally are also looking to take care of their bodies – simply in a different way. “How the ‘natural agers’ stand apart from the successful ageing paradigm is that they are really trying to understand ageing as a natural, normal, bodily process, and not one that they have to feel compelled to fight against,” says Brooks. “For them, it’s very much like, ‘yes, ageing is happening, it’s something that I cannot control, therefore why should I feel like I have to treat it, or prevent it, or fight back against it.’” 

Body positivity doesn’t yet include attitudes towards ageing

“The new procedures – mini facelifts, jaw lifts, forehead lifts, etc. – allow for a less extreme look, a less fake look,” says Brooks. “The women that I interviewed don't want to look fake, they want to be natural.” 

 A 2017 report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons confirms a desire for more natural enhancements; women across the US are asking for more modest breast augmentations, and fewer are opting for surgery that removes skin, opting for fillers and plumpers instead. 

Instead, cosmetic procedures that are seen as regular maintenance and preventative tweaks are becoming more popular, though the women Brooks spoke to still had feelings of conflict and ambivalence around having the procedures done. “It’s a very tricky thing. Post-procedure, some women said, ‘I just spent all this time and pain and money on these procedures, but nobody's noticing that I look different’. But other women felt like people 

 notice, and then they’d ask, ‘who’s your doctor, they did an amazing job’, which women didn’t like either, because they wanted it to look natural.” 

“One of the advantages to all of these new cosmetic anti-ageing interventions is that you can subscribe to what’s called the ‘slow ageing’ movement,” says Brooks. “You can have Botox and Juvederm every three to six months over the life course, and engage in age prevention maintenance. If you start in your early 30s or your mid 30s, they are so subtle and they’re able to do them in ways that don’t look extreme that you really do look young.” 

 And studies show that people are starting younger; soft-tissue fillers among 20- to 29-year-olds increased by a third between 2010 and 2015, reaching more than 67,000 procedures. Additionally, 25- to 34-year-olds were the demographic most interested in dermal fillers in 2016. 

Everyday maintenance can prevent the need for major procedures

The body positivity movement is encouraging a celebration of diversity and helping change the conversation around beauty standards for women. But ageing is a topic that’s still taboo. “I’m encouraged by a celebration of diversity in younger generations,” says Brooks. “But when it comes to ageing, I still feel like this is one holdout area. Respecting ageing is about not pathologising it, not stigmatising it. But I don’t see that sort of celebration. What I see instead is more of a normalisation of the interventive route – an approval and acceptance of cosmetic anti-ageing procedures.” 

’s survey backs up these findings – 56% of female respondents said they were worried about the physical signs of ageing, compared to just 34% of men. 

 However, the ‘natural agers’ that Brook spoke to are “trying to appreciate what’s unique about being old, and they’re trying really hard to really appreciate new freedom. One of the things that the natural agers are doing a lot of is trying to read the older face and the older body as beautiful. It’s about understanding that the 85-year-old woman with white hair and wrinkles is attractive, but just in a way that’s different than a 20-year-old woman.” 

One major issue among the women Brooks spoke to was poor media representation. “In the US, we really don’t have any models, particularly of women who are growing older naturally, in the public eye. Even in politics, most of our female politicians are having cosmetic anti-ageing interventions. So, it’s hard for us to see the models of natural ageing,” says Brooks. 

 It’s a similar story in the UK; a 2016 study looking into the attitudes of 40- to 89-year-old women found that 97% wanted to see older models routinely used in all types of advertising. But choosing the right model to speak to this demographic is important; although 61% said they liked the information in ads for beauty products aimed at them, 65% disliked the kinds of models used, claiming they were too young or digitally enhanced, which made them distrust the ads and less likely to buy the products. 

 Finding the right spokesperson to lead the fight against the stigma ageing women face can put brands on the frontline with them.

 is Director of the Women’s Studies Program, and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Providence College. Her book, The Ways Women Age: Using and Refusing Cosmetic Intervention, explores what everyday women have to say about growing older in an era wherein they are increasingly bombarded with products and procedures designed to make them look younger. Brooks’ current research analyses the new wave of menopause-centered pharmaceutical advertising in the US.

 is Canvas8’s editor. Previously, she worked for retail trends consultancy GDR, where shopping was part of the job description. When she’s not getting her head around the quirks of human behaviour, she’s busy ‘researching’ the latest food or fitness fad.

United States

Beauty

Health and Fitness

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For many women, wrinkles and grey hair are seen as things that must be fixed to maintain a sense of self. Abigail T. Brooks, author of 

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