Column | On your own as a political statement with a wrinkle head over the streets, makes no sense

« My head my choice, » wrote Linda Magazine This month on the cover of a special about aging and plastic surgery. ‘My head my choice’, it sounds so militant and free. Everything we find important as modern people is in that sense. The idea that ‘freedom’ is synonymous with ‘making a choice’, whatever choice that is.

Only that, in the case of plastic surgery, is of course a whopper of a lie.

In my opinion, women are not afraid of being really old and wrinkled. In fact: we dream of that last phase. How really liberating will it be to sit on a chair like a Yoda, with people around you who long for your life wisdom and brille? The final stage in a female life: perhaps even more valuable than the years that you were a young, wanted girl.

But we were not awarded at all to slow down slowly but visibly until we end up in that phase. Or yes, of course it is. Everything is allowed. But what is ‘allowed’ if the decline is accompanied by a proportional loss of social and sexual capital? Money, love, friends: it is all increasingly a matter of visibly expensive maintenance of body and members.

There is no free choice at all, but of a perverse coercion to use our precious time and money on fading our traits as soon as depth comes in. Because no matter how you look at it: plastic surgery, our muscles explains and affects our expression. Anger, big tears and growling desire: just a little less visible. « Keep life nice inside, women! » Is a message that has been coming to us for centuries, in a different variant. Using Botox and Fillers is therefore nothing but showing your adaptability to a rotten world again, by subjecting yourself to the syringe and knife as a good girl. Until the 60s we sprayed women flat to help them get rid of their hysteria. Now we look for the syringe ourselves.

Interrupt every compliment with a tight: « I do this to survive. »

And for fear of coming out of the corner anti-feminist, we can no longer say that we have to do that spray and fills. That the poison is that we have sewed ourselves horribly in the suit by surrendering to the endless ‘minor maintenance’, that it is terrible and sad that our social position is not strong enough to light a middle finger to that mess. Because that would lose the women who use it. And that is really not allowed. So that’s how we keep each other in line, and we get no further than confused and inconsistent statements about plastic surgery, culminating in a relieving killer like « my head my choice. »

And indeed, we are too late too. The tide can no longer be reversed. We are all going to it. Because on your own as a political statement with a wrinkle head crossing the streets, makes no sense.

The only thing we can do is be honest. So smooth out that fantastic landscape, head towards the people, and interrupt every compliment that you get with a tight: « I do this to survive. »

Until we can finally be a Yoda on a beautiful day in the spring.

Sarah Slumber Writes a column every week. She is the author of books, essays and plays.