What if: ‘You look young for your age” wasn’t a compliment? What if it was neutral, or even slightly insulting – ‘why are you making a judgement on my face?’ We may be closer to that being a reality as more women – from celebrities to the woman next door – seek a more self-compassionate way to approaching ageing.
Anna Murphy, 52-year-old fashion director and author of Destination Fabulous – which one reviewer described as an “empowering manifesto for changing our attitudes to age” – is one of them. “All I did [with my book] was say you don’t have to inject things into your face, or worse still cut your face,” she tells Positive News. “It should be such an obvious thing to say but it was such a relief to people.”
This isn’t a subtle rebrand, a renaming of ‘crow’s feet’ to ‘smile lines’, but women on the ground deciding to turn away from the relentless marketing. Fearne Cotton has described the lines on her faces as being there “because I like laughing, I really like smiling, I’m often quite surprised, and I focus and concentrate on things that I really enjoy.”
