Áilín Quinlan: The mirror showed an abundance of wrinkles...did I want Botox? 

The mirror in the lift was big and highly magnified and brightly lit and, unwisely, I leaned in.

Immediately I learned something I’d have been far better off not knowing – what a happy thing it was that I’d never gotten around to buying one of those vanity mirrors with 5X power.

The mirror in the lift showed an unexpected abundance of wrinkles in my forehead and fine (and not so fine) lines around my eyes.

I slumped home and put the phone to selfie mode.

The news was no better.

“Tell me the truth,” I said to my husband, “have I gone all wrinkly?”

“Not at all,” he said loyally.

“Stop it,” I said.

Did I or did I not have wrinkles in my forehead?

He paused.

“Maybe a few,” he said cautiously.

“More than a few?” I demanded.

“Well, yeah,” he muttered.

“What about around my eyes, like in the corners?” I asked anxiously.

You look great, he said.

“In the name of God, would you just stop,” I said impatiently. “Tell me the truth?”

He paused, then pretended to lean in.

“Maybe a few,” he said cautiously.

So, then.

Loads of lines. Crow’s feet. Whole maps of wrinkles. Forehead, eyes.

“My skin is ageing,” I mewled.

He said, quite unsympathetically, I felt, that he hadn’t seen me complaining when we went to see The Odyssey and got the reduced priced tickets for the over-60s.

Face it, he said. That’s where we are now. “That girl at the till didn’t ask for ID,” he added.

This is my husband’s kind of humour.

I went away and secretly researched the signs of ageing skin.

Static wrinkles – these are the wrinkles that remain when your face is relaxed.

Yes, I had them.

Dynamic wrinkles, which form from repeated facial expressions like smiling or frowning. Yep, those too.

But - as yet- I didn’t see any age spots or enlarged pores, and there didn’t seem to be any sagging or thinning skin.

Still, those wrinkles kind of nagged.

Personally, I’ve always felt that Cher, Madonna, and Kris Jenner are fooling nobody and, when I thought about it, which I admit wasn’t often, I’d held to the Meryl Streep School of Thought about the benefits of aging naturally.

Now, though, I’d come nose to glass with the actual results of ageing naturally.

Hmmm.

Botox.

Botox, I read, is a neuromodulator, which means that it relaxes the muscles that cause your wrinkles.

Did I want Botox injections?

I could also, I read, get microneedling into my face to tackle the fine lines and crow’s feet.

God, though, I do hate needles.

I read that cosmetic treatments require repeat treatments - the muscles start to move again as the treatment wears off and the effects fade, so the financial cost of maintaining a youthful face adds up as the years pass.

Also, I read, if you get too much product injected into your puss, you can start looking a bit weird.

On the plus side, women report looking refreshed and feeling happier and more confident following cosmetic treatments, which require no downtime and are relatively affordable.

I read on. There’s also now a sophisticated thing called a deep plane facelift, which costs about €30,000.

This, I read, is an advanced surgical technique that lifts and releases the facial ligaments rather than just pulling the skin.

It looks natural and you don’t get a ‘pulled’ or tight look apparently because the tension is put on deep muscles rather than on the skin. The results reportedly last 10 to 15 years or more.

Cheap at the price then, if you have the money and the motivation.

I read that more women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s are now availing of non-invasive cosmetic treatments, sometimes to address issues that have bugged them for years. God bless their sense of pride and their energy, I thought.

“Yerra, pure madness,” my husband exclaimed when I shared my research findings.

“Did you read that on Chat GPT, Mr Know-It-All?” I asked.

“I read it in my brain,” he said, imperturbable.

There was an interview with a young woman who had started off having Botox in her early twenties. After a few years, she reported, she started to notice that although she still didn’t have any wrinkles, her skin had started to feel like ‘glass’.

Hmm.

I thought about my face, how those frown lines and laugh lines, those fine lines I don’t want to think about, are the trophies of a life.

Of struggle and survival. Of ups and downs. Of gains and losses. Happiness and sadness.

Pretty hard-earned, those lines, if you want to look at it that way.

I considered how those lines tell the story of a life, and yet how my face has never made itself the epicentre of my life.

I thought about how my skin is still fairly soft. How my face retains its movement and its many expressions without freezing or tightening from stuff like implants or skin-pulling.

I thought about how this face of mine with its natural wrinkles aligns with the dignity of my real age, and has never cost more than a reasonably priced skin-cream. How I never worry about ‘complications’ or of ending up looking ‘overdone’.

I know well that I’m far from flawless, but to date I’ve never attempted to look it.

Should I really start now?

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

There’s for and against, but overall, I’m glad I didn’t start injecting my face at 21.