Discussing cosmetic surgery and minor enhancements is a fine line to walk, especially for a wealthy, glamorous woman.
She aims not to alienate others by suggesting they’re not making enough effort. So, despite her high-definition screen appearances, she claims to avoid Botox because it supposedly makes her forehead overly smooth.
Well, good for her!
Nevertheless, even at 53 with impeccable dimples, Jennifer Garner confesses to visiting a dermatologist annually, where she undergoes various treatments.
However, to prevent any envy, she shares a rather puzzling statement: “I can’t really notice any changes afterward. What I’ve observed is, the more you invest in dermatological procedures, the less noticeable they are. And somehow, that’s a positive outcome.”
It seems there’s a belief that women can’t be both beautiful and intelligent.
She was talking to Kylie Kelce earlier this week on a podcast called, incongruously, Not Gonna Lie. These celebrities don’t want to alienate feminists, cinemagoers or mums, so they chatter on about how they are happy in their own skin, insisting we are ‘all beautiful’. But scratch the perfectly exfoliated skin and they’re just as insecure as the rest of us.
Intellectually, we want to channel Linda McCartney, not dye our hair or wear make-up, stomp around in wellies raising sheep, but we realize that of course Linda had a devoted husband, was brought up by the sort of wealthy, patrician family who told her she could do no wrong, the world was her oyster. Not many of us are that lucky, raised in a bubble where we’re assured, just as Mark Darcy told Bridget, that we’re fine, just as we are.
In spite of being a beauty at the age of 53 with perfect dimples, Jennifer Garner admits she sees a dermatologist once a year to become a human pin cushion (Pictured: February 20)
I had a facelift and blepharoplasty when I was the age Garner is now: it’s the moment your face tends to melt like the South Pole but also the age when you should feel settled, loved, with a great career, secure home.
But as women land in their fifties only to find their lives are chaotic and busy, while at the same time spoon fed the oleaginously smooth face of Nicole Kidman, the undimmed sexual magnetism of Monica Bellucci, of course we’re going to find we come up wanting.
I looked less miserable after my face lift, so I cheered up inside, too: but boy, what a high price, literally. Inner peace would have been so much cheaper, but amid the noise of the media and advertisements, it’s awfully hard to meditate these days, to quiet self doubt.
I’ve also had a brow transplant – nothing more aging than a few scraggy grey tufts! – while my body below my eyes is entirely hair free: go figure. I’ve had fat injected into the backs of my hands, Botox, filler, collagen in my lips (super painful!) and on and on.
I justified the pain and expense as being an extension of self care: most of us dye our hair, after all. It boosts confidence to dress well. But the expense and pain haven’t meant I’m loved: I was still cheated on by my last boyfriend with a woman whom I judged a frump in a bad coat.
The lesson here is that most men of my generation (more on this later) don’t notice or, if they do, are terrified by our fabulousness and act out.
The truth is that Garner’s soft anti-tweakment stance is a privilege, given she’s a natural beauty with access to great nutrition and spare time to work out. But on podcasts like this one she wants to play the feminist, not call out the fatties in Walmart who pay to see her movies.
She wants to be relatable, but deep down she, like 99 per cent of women, has succumbed to the idea rammed down our throats by the fashion and beauty industries that we need to look like adolescent girls, for ever (I doubt Linda McCartney ever spent much on skincare or even clothes beyond a shrunken cardi and an old tea dress). Garner knows most women can’t afford a Hollywood surgeon or even a massage to make us feel better. Hence her word salad.
I looked less miserable after my facelift, so I cheered up inside, too: but boy, what a high price, literally (Pictured: Author Liz Jones)
On podcasts like this one she wants to play the feminist, not call out the fatties in Walmart who pay to see her movies (Pictured: Garner in 2004)
And she’s not the only one at it. Halle Berry, legendary sex symbol, is now, aged an improbable 59, extolling the wonder that is the JoyLux vFit, just one of myriad options for ‘intimate wellness’. Its LED light improves blood flow — vital for vaginal health — and lubrication. She’s telling us that hovering near 60 (I’m too busy Hoovering), we must be oven ready, able to emerge from the ocean looking ravenous in a bikini.
An emerging problem is that the prices of even the most invasive cosmetic interventions have plummeted, readily available in every shopping mall. And for twentysomethings, pressure is not just from magazines and movies and older male partners, it’s from Instagram and from young men who are addicted to reality TV and porn.
One young woman told me that boys now say, if a girl hasn’t had anything done – lips, cheeks, lashes – ‘Look at the state of that!’ It’s expected, particularly among working-class communities.
My eightysomething friend’s minimum wage caregiver took a week off for a facelift and new teeth in Turkey, only to return and have her daughter exclaim in tears: ‘You no longer look like my mum!’ Doubtless the effect she was after.
Is there an end to us regarding women’s bodies as playthings when we should just be grateful we’re healthy? Will I be making the shape of a pretzel for a Hollywood wax when I’m 70?
As Germaine Greer points out in The Whole Woman: ‘One of my girlfriends is forever stroking the underside of her chin… unconsciously feeling for the emergence of a bristle and can be seen doing it even in her daughter’s wedding video.’ There is not one second when we’re not wondering if our body is letting us down.
I’m afraid Jennifer Garner’s long legs are dangling each side of a precarious fence: of wanting to be relatable but also nursing insecurities as deep-seated as Kris Kenner’s facelift. She’s having her cake and eating it. It’s a hypothetical cake, mind: these gals don’t do carbs.
