Hilary Fannin: Maybe facial fillers are a way of hiding in plain sight

Within a kilometre of my messy house, whether I turn left by the mephitic bins or right past the wilting wild poppies, I can access an aesthetic clinic where, for three pieces of silver, I can buy myself a slice of eternal youth.

North, south, east and west of me, high-spec beauty clinics, offering, among a variety of therapies, a range of non-surgical “tweakments”, are mushrooming like, well, mushrooms in the mulch of our mortal decay. (I say, steady on there, mate, what’s a microdermabrasion facial between friends, eh?) Yep, if you’re looking for a ride on the rejuvenation roundabout, you probably need look no further than the end of your as-yet-unadorned nose.

Indeed, such is the proliferation of aesthetic medicine establishments littering the ‘burbs that one might well pop out for a bacon butty and come home instead with a Botoxed backside.

Take it from me. I went out for a bag of cat lit yesterday and stalked home hours later with a brand-new jawline and a burst of special-offer self-confidence, having had vials of stubborn fat removed from my hazy chin. (You know, in all the promotional tat I’ve read over the years concerning weight loss and beauty, I don’t ever remember fat being described as anything but stubborn. Sanguine, laid-back, blousy or louche lipoids, the kind that look charming on a barstool while you reach for the Babycham, seem to have been airbrushed out, like crow’s feet and laughter lines.)

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Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, I didn’t, of course, get myself a new chin. That was a downright lie. I did, however, go to the dental hygienist, located over the local supermarket, where I found myself gazing at a brochure full of manufactured smiles and cosmetic contouring that left me feeling more than a little ortho-challenged. I’m now aching for porcelain veneers in much the same way as I once longed for a puppy.

Anyway, such is the normalisation and availability of treatments to alter one’s sagging visage that you could nip out to feed the meter and inadvertently find, instead, that it’s you who’s been refreshed, not to mention enhanced and finally enabled to inhabit – should the promotional literature be believed – “the body you deserve”.

I’ve no idea what kind of body I deserve, but I’m pretty sure that most of what I throw into it isn’t helping the one I’m tethered to.

Maybe facial fillers are a way of hiding in plain sight. If no one can discern history on your face, then maybe you have no history

The problem as I see it with aesthetic beauty treatments is that while you can pay someone in a white coat to iron out a couple of wrinkles, reshape your nose, lift your eyelids, smooth your facial contours, boost, wax, blast, diminish or elevate every last bit of you, from problematic philtrum to pesky pube, the rest of your life stays the same. Bored spouses, bewildered offspring, scathing mothers and unworthy soulmates all remain as reminders of a life that cannot be so easily modified.

I don’t know, maybe facial fillers are a way of hiding in plain sight. If no one can discern history on your face, then maybe you have no history. Maybe there was no pain, no uncertainty, no rage, no doubt, no despair.

I watched a woman on the Paris Metro recently; I recognised her from the early-morning Eurostar. Like me, she had boarded in London’s St Pancras at dawn, then disembarked at Gare du Nord in rush hour. Now we were on the same subway. Unlike me, she was expensively clad in a Grecian-looking dress, clasped at the neck. She wore, too, a skinny denim jacket, a pork-pie straw hat, and espadrilles that tied around her slim calves.

Her face was a painted plate of frozen features. She could have been 30, though she was probably 40. She stood very still, her plumped mouth unmoving while her tired, addled, angrily attention-seeking adolescent daughter pawed at her mother’s neck. Unblinking, the woman watched her own reflection in the darkened windows. It was impossible to know what she was thinking, if she was thinking. She looked neither happy nor sad, tired nor wakeful, excited nor trepidatious.

I wondered where she and her daughter were going. When we dragged our weary bodies and tatty backpacks off the train at Montparnasse, the two of them remained on board, sculpted parent and sulky offspring, an ambiguous tableau of nothing and everything moving on down the line.