Imagine this: a glamorous charity luncheon at a chic Italian restaurant nestled in the heart of Dubai. As I scan the room, my gaze lands on an elderly Asian electronics mogul dining alone. Sensing he might enjoy some company, I approach him, eager to brighten his afternoon.
Drawing on the well-known penchant of affluent older gentlemen for discussions about health and longevity, I decide to engage him in a light-hearted age guessing game. Feeling unusually confident in my appearance that day—after all, at 65, I do clean up rather well—I challenge him to guess my age. I urge him to be candid with his estimation.
He scrutinizes me thoughtfully, tilting his head as he makes his assessment.
“I don’t know… early 70s?” he suggests.
For a fleeting moment, I wonder if he’s teasing me, recalling how my children often jest about my age, adding a couple of years as a playful jab on my birthdays. But no, his demeanor reveals he’s sincerely offering his honest opinion.
See, by Dubai standards, where it’s practically illegal for expat women not to have Botox after the age of 30, I probably do look older than my 65 years.
All the same, ouch. Big ouch. Maybe this grand pact I made with myself almost two years ago to ditch the Botox and the collagen injections, and so on, for good, to brave the world au naturel was a little hasty?
So let’s backtrack here. Having been a journalist for 35 years and lived a good part of it in New York, I’ve had more than my fair share of aesthetic ‘tweakments’. (Urgh! I despise that word, so from now on, I won’t use it.) In other words microneedling, laser, light therapy, polynucleotides (injectable salmon DNA), dermal filler, hyaluronic acid, you name it, I’ve had it.
Christa D’Souza says in Dubai, where it’s practically illegal for expat women not to have Botox after the age of 30, she probably does look older than her 65 years
My most steadfast friend out of all of them, though, is Botox, which I’ve had injected into my forehead, neck and tip of the nose every five months or so since I was about 50.
But that was then. Two years ago, at the age of 63, I decided to give it all up. I’d reached a point in my life where enough just felt enough. No more mucking around with this face God had given me. Forget the pain and the cost and the time, where did I think it would all end?
I’ll tell you where. Look at Sharon Osbourne (73) or Donatella Versace (70) or Lauren Sanchez Bezos (56). Look at Madonna, 67, a waxen cipher of herself up there on the stage at US festival Coachella last weekend.
And let’s not forget those gargoylish pictures of the three Charlie’s Angels, which appeared earlier this month. One doesn’t want to be unkind, but to say Kate Jackson, 77, Jaclyn Smith, 80, and Cheryl Ladd, 74, had ‘had work’ would be the understatement of all time.
Kate Jackson’s rictus-y features gave particular cause for concern. I mean, yes, not one wrinkle or pore anywhere, as smooth as a peeled boiled egg, in fact.
But it’s as though the surgeon took everything off and then put it back on in a slightly different order.
There’s a special sort of look those Hollywood ladies get which always brings to mind the satirical novel The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh about the Californian funeral industry. The plot centres around a Hollywood embalming parlour called Whispering Glades, where corpses are meticulously preserved to make them look as though they’re still living.
Who would choose to look like that? Not Kate Jackson, I’m sure, but therein lies the problem with succumbing to cosmetic treatment and the slippery slope it inevitably entails. It’s got to end somewhere – and I was done with playing the game.
Kate Jackson in her Charlie’s Angels days
The gargoylish pictures of the three Charlie’s Angels. One doesn’t want to be unkind, but to say (from left) Kate Jackson, 77, Jacyln Smith, 80, and Cheryl Ladd, 74, had ‘had work’ would be the understatement of all time, writes Christa
Yes, if I’d been clever enough to lie about my age, as so many celebrities had the intelligence to do, and dance the whole cosmetic intervention conga a bit earlier in life, I could have probably kidded the world for a bit longer.
Meanwhile, ‘prejuvenation’ procedures (i.e. getting preventative Botox before you even see your first wrinkle) is what everyone swears by nowadays. But, ultimately, you cannot cheat biology. At a certain point, you have to face up to the truth.
Your 60s, surely, are a time to re-evaluate one’s priorities, a time to explore the inner self, to think more existentially, more spiritually. But also to face facts. We’re all going to die sometime, right? Not to sound callous, but if you’re not in the market for a boyfriend or a baby, what should it matter how young you look?
The pursuit of youth is one thing but health and happiness are another, and at a certain age, we do ourselves a disservice by chasing the former over the latter.
It may be a myth, but I’ve always thought if there were any cohort who could get it right, it would be French women, particularly in my experience, Parisiennes. Those Parisiennes d’un certain age with their killer heels and bedroom hair and unapologetic wrinkles, seem to have the balance just right. I’m thinking here of the extremely attractive former editor of French Vogue, Joan Juliet Buck, 77, who has never been under the knife.
‘I think we are like old stone houses,’ she recently told the New York Times. ‘We have the value of antiquity. If you haven’t tweaked yourself recently, it’s like a working fireplace that’s been going since 1680. We’re authentic.’
Well, hurrah for that. Crinkles, wrinkles, imperfections, as no-nonsense Brits we too must keep in mind these are what make us human.
Madonna, 67, a waxen cipher of herself up there on the stage at US festival Coachella last weekend
‘Glory be to God for dappled things,’ as the wonderful poem Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins goes. After all, what do I want written on my gravestone? She had no lines?
Oh, it’s all so morbid isn’t it – but for those of you reading this who aren’t nearly there yet, I’ll tell you, you get to my age, and the fleetingness of life starts hitting you in the face far more frequently than it used to.
This decade I’m in right now –my seventh! – is otherwise known as ‘Sniper’s Alley’. Meaning, if you make it to the end, count yourself lucky. To put it bluntly, this is when contemporaries start to drop off – vital, boisterous, youthful-seeming contemporaries you believed would live for ever, like yourself, and could not picture not being around any more.
When someone asks me how I am, increasingly I’m beginning to answer with a simple ‘alive’.
And yet, is that how I really feel? As though I’m holding on by the skin of my teeth and should be thankful to be only that – alive?
A couple of weeks ago I went to the birthday party of a long-lost school friend, and as I did that ‘temperature taking’ we all do at gatherings of peers we haven’t seen in a while, I couldn’t help feeling a mixture of shock and smugness. Who were all these elderly folk? How could we possibly be the same age?
You see, secretly, I still believe I’m ‘in the game’. Of course I am not. It is a wonderful and very human piece of self-serving delusion. In my head I am still in my mid-40s, but in the cold light of day – as opposed to in front of my super-flattering, low-lit bathroom mirror – with my pebbly jaw and sunspots and deeply furrowed laughter lines, I look pretty much what I am, which is five years shy of 70.
Sharon Osbourne, 73. There’s a special sort of look Hollywood ladies get which always brings to mind the satirical novel The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh about the Californian funeral industry, writes Christa
Donatella Versace, 70. The pursuit of youth is one thing but health and happiness are another, and at a certain age, we do ourselves a disservice by chasing the former over the latter, writes Christa
That being established (thank you, Mr Dubai) can I now make my peace with it? The honest answer is, I am not sure that I can.
Don’t get me wrong. That Luddite, no-intervention pact I made with myself was heartfelt and true. Part of me is rather in awe of a certain breed of woman, often the posher sort, who pooh-poohs dyeing her hair and takes a perverse satisfaction out of dressing like a bag lady.
The kind of staunchly British woman who would never dream of whitening her teeth, still less getting Invisalign braces; the kind who claims she has no idea what Mounjaro is but doesn’t need it anyway because she’s always doing the garden or walking the dogs.
But in truth that is not me. Not even a little bit.
I care too much. I’m too darn vain. I may be eligible to draw my pension, I may – horrors – find myself becoming one of those people who enjoys the odd afternoon nap, but if modern aesthetic technology is on my side, why would I not use it?
This au naturel lark may be just that: a lark. Surely there is a middle ground between iconic historian of ancient Rome Mary Beard and Madonna, the iconic queen of pop?
I’m not looking to audition for The Real Housewives Of Chiswick (it doesn’t exist yet, but why not?) and my goal will never be an invitation to Donald Trump’s Florida estate Mar-a-Lago. (Don’t even get me started on the gaggle of expressionless Barbies which populate The White House of today.)
A young man in his early 30s, whom I met at a party the other night, told me his mother never aged until she was 65, but after that precise birthday, she suddenly, for him anyway, turned into an old dodderer. Science backs this up.
Lauren Sanchez Bezos, 56. A degree of self-delusion is what keeps the human race going, writes Christa
On a molecular level we dramatically decline at two distinct points: when we are 44 and when we are 65. Maybe if I’d met my Dubai industrialist a year earlier he wouldn’t have estimated my age as he did?
Besides, as any longevity expert would tell you, the mindset of ‘giving up’ is not good for you either. Studies show that a ‘time’s up’ attitude of internalised ageism can damage both emotional and physical health.
A degree of self-delusion is what keeps the human race going. And not everyone who gets a little help on the appearance front ends up looking like a candidate for Botched, the addictive Hollywood TV series about plastic surgery disasters.
Which genius, for example, ‘looks after’ Michelle Pfeiffer, 67, or indeed, if rumours are to be believed, Brad Pitt, 62? And what about Kris Jenner, 70, matriarch of the Kardashians?
Though it’s spooky how she now looks almost younger than her daughter Kim, I think we can all agree the $300,000 (£222,000) deep plane face lift her Manhattan-based plastic surgeon, Dr Steven Levine, performed on her last year is pretty spectacular.
And so… I WhatsApp the person I’ve always trusted with such matters until my little epiphany two years ago and book in with my beloved dermatologist Dr Suha Kersh at her gleaming atelier in London’s South Kensington (interestingly, she also practises out of Dubai).
I’m a little embarrassed to see her because after some hardcore tanning over the past six months without SPF (I know, I know), I may look a little different to when she saw me last.
Do I feel like I’ve fallen off the wagon? Well, yes.
Maybe 70 is when I will finally throw in the towel, or perhaps when my husband or my children or one of my true friends tells me to stop it. But, knowing me, I wouldn’t be surprised if I carried on doing it for ever.
Supposing, for example, Kris Jenner’s plastic surgeon (or, for that matter, the person who ‘looks after’ either Pitt or Pfeiffer) had an opening, well, I’d be on that flight faster than I finished this sentence.
The truth is this ageing business is a dastardly one, and I see no point in eschewing help. It’s not like you’re taking the moral high ground by refusing it. No one cares what you do. There’s no stigma attached any more.
Going forward, I shall therefore avail myself of all the help I can get – and hope to get a slightly different verdict the next time
I’m stupid enough to play the age game.
