AAbout 15 years ago, an Australian woman I worked with took me aside and told me I should get Botox. I was building a career as a television presenter and she felt very strongly that if I wasn’t careful, something would hold me back. “It’s that frown line across the middle of your forehead. It’s quite disturbing,” she said. “It will only get worse,” she added. Her tone was neither friendly nor unfriendly. No specific offense was taken.
She was right about one thing: it got worse. I was barely in my 40s then. The line has since deepened, into first a fissure and then a canyon. Around the time of my 50th birthday, the tops of the canyon sides closed in, turning it into a sort of tunnel, I guess you’d have to call it. No daylight gets in there unless I physically retract my forehead. Or I’m very surprised about something. These days – I’m 57 next month – it’s so deep I have to use a small toothbrush to clean it properly. You’ll be surprised what pops up in there.
This week I read with interest research by the Humboldt University of Berlin which suggests that people with wrinkles are perceived as less pleasant and trustworthy than those with smoother skin. How shallow. Disappointing. I wonder what they would make of my brow tunnel.
A loved one tells me I look a lot like that dashing Ukrainian general Valerii Zaluzhnyi, because of our round Slavic heads and, yes, the clefts on our foreheads. Again, none taken. I compared my frown line to his and I think mine is prettier. There is something strange about his: instead of one long one, as I have, he has two shorter attempts, which seem as if they were supposed to meet, but somehow lost their way. And they are from the middle. Mine, while much more deeply distracting, at least has symmetry to it.
I’ve always shied away from Botox, but if Zaluzhnyi wants to go for it, so will I.
