Caroline Verdon: How our body looks is not the most important thing

She’s in her 60s and is looking fabulous. Last time I saw her she had long blonde hair but she’s since had it all chopped off and had it dyed a dark chestnut brown and it really suits her.

As we stood surrounded by fruit and veg having a quick five-minute catch-up I told her how lovely I thought her hair looked. She told me that she had been having botox and that I ought to give it a go to smooth out my crow’s feet. I wasn’t even aware I had crow’s feet and thought I was a good few years off even considering botox. Apparently that isn’t the message my face is giving off.

Once I’d wrestled the shopping bags into the car I sat in the driver’s seat and pulled down the visor to have a look in the mirror. I think crow’s feet is pushing it, bluetit’s toes, maybe.

I drove home thinking about what she’d said and, as I bundled into the house, the cleaner was preparing to bundle out. (Yes, I have a cleaner. My husband and I are really busy/really lazy and argue over who cleans what so we agreed years ago that rather than buy each other Christmas presents we’d pay for a cleaner instead and it works brilliantly). She’d had her hair done and I told her I thought it looked really nice. Turns out she went to the place that’s around the corner from us for the first time and was really impressed. She went on to tell me that they did loads of stuff I’d probably be interested in, including botox. Not an hour had passed and that was two people who, without any sort of prompting whatsoever, were suggesting my face was wrinkly and I should consider getting work done.

I’ve always thought of cosmetic procedures as a bit ‘each to their own’ but I do worry about how easy it is now to be able to physically change things about your appearance. It’s not the change that concerns me but the psychological effect. A girl I was at school with had a nose job at 16 and by 18 had had a boob job, cheek implants and a tummy tuck. In my opinion she was a beautiful girl who didn’t need anything doing but she had all of these self-perceived flaws. It seemed to me though that as soon as she felt her nose was ‘good enough’, the insecurity moved to another part of her body until she had that tucked or implanted. Now she is almost unrecognisable. In circumstances like this I wonder if the problem is less the physical form and more the insane amount of pressure it’s so easy to put on ourselves to look a certain way.

I often watch dating programmes on TV (I love a good love story!) and I always find it interesting when they feature someone who hasn’t been on a date for years because they feel insecure over an aspect of their physical appearance. I watch and think how sad it is that this person felt so unnecessarily unworthy for so long. In many ways I’ve been one of those people in the past, I think most of us have at some point, whether it was turning down teenage trips to the swimming pool for fear of getting in my swim togs in front of friends or more recently not wanting to get involved at soft play for fear of people staring as I, the fat Mum, went down the slide with my little boy. Since when did how our body looks (or how we perceive our body looks) become more important that what it can do? At a squeeze my backside will fit down the slide, I can climb through the softplay tunnels and jump in the waves at the beach and walk to the park and can just about put on roller boots and not break my neck. My son loves doing all of those things with me and I love doing them with him. The size in my jeans certainly isn’t going to stop me and neither are my cavernous crows feet.