I’m with Jennifer Garner and Ariana Grande: down with tweakments, be done with fillers and celebrate the lines that make life beautiful
If, like me, you have watched agog, alarmed or just confused at the speed at which tweakments and cosmetic surgery have gone mainstream, then consider this minor piece of celebrity news.
Earlier this month, Jennifer Garner became the latest A-lister to say that having Botox was a mistake. “Botox doesn’t work very well for me,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “I like to be able to move my forehead.”
She joins a growing list of high-profile women including Courteney Cox, Nicole Kidman, Ariana Grande, Cameron Diaz and more who have described quitting Botox, fillers or other injectables because of undesired results – namely looking “weird” (direct quote from Diaz there), and losing the ability to make certain facial expressions. Which presumably, for people whose income is directly linked to their ability to make you feel stuff using their faces (also known as “acting”), must be a serious setback.
I’m no actor, but as someone plagued by a “face that gives it away”, I am delighted to hear it being said that facial expressions are, in fact, quite great. Beautiful. Powerful. Worth having in the round, even if there are downsides, like getting you in trouble at every karaoke night (“You look like Wallace smiling at Gromit,” said a friend of mine about my “pretending to enjoy this!” face. ) Or in the case of the Hollywood set, looking a little older. (“You need movement in your face,” said Cox. “Those aren’t wrinkles, they’re smile lines. I’ve had to learn to embrace movement.”)
