According to Cardiff University psychologist Michael Lewis, Botox in certain areas of the face can make women depressed. Women (and men, presumably) who had had the treatment around their eyes were found to be 50 per cent more likely to be unhappy.
With poison injected into the muscles that give us crow’s feet, we cannot smile properly, which in turn cuts off signals to the brain telling us to feel happy.
This all follows on from Dr Lewis’s earlier study, which showed if you have Botox in your forehead and cannot frown, you will feel less cross.
I’m trying to look puzzled as I read this new research, which is hard given that I’ve had Botox in my forehead (and around my eyes and on one side of my mouth, to stop it drooping as if I’ve had a stroke), but it kind of makes sense. However, we don’t need a psychologist to tell us this, surely?
I first heard this theory in the mid-Nineties, when I went into Versace on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles.
The flamboyant male assistant said to me: ‘Have you ever said hello to a heel?’ (that wasn’t the psychological bit), and then, as I looked despondent at all the low-cut, gold-spangled dresses, he added: ‘Smile! It’s nature’s facelift!’ Men are always saying this sort of thing to me, in a slightly less La-La-Land way. They say, as they hand me a VAT receipt, or deliver a package: ‘Smile! It might never happen!’
As men in white vans draw up alongside me in a traffic queue, they momentarily stop eating to gesture ‘Smile!’ They then mime big arcs in their faces.
I think two things are going on here, from the university professor to white van man, which shows all men are equal when it comes to being patronising and annoying.
Thatcher graphicFirst, once again those of us who have had cosmetic procedures are being discriminated against. A leading surgeon told me something interesting at a party. When people have skiing accidents, they return to have treatment on the NHS to repair ligaments expressly so they can go skiing again!
So, why is a self-indulgent, bad-for-the-environment hobby (the ploughs that smooth the snow use almost as much fuel as an aeroplane) more acceptable than not wanting hamster pouches, where the fat has migrated from your cheeks to your jowls?
And, second, these men prefer women to be coy and smiling, like a geisha girl, at all times. They assume nothing bad has happened to me, which as we all know is very far from the truth.
I always think people, particularly theatre audiences, laugh and smile far too easily. Taxi drivers chat loudly on their Bluetooth phone systems as they ferry me around, guffawing with helpless laughter. I always wonder, who on earth is on the other end? Woody Allen? Groucho Marx?
I cannot stand people who smile as they talk, even when delivering bad news. This is what Margaret Thatcher was very good at. It is smarmy, and insincere.
Is W!zz Air the worst airline in the world? I’ve just returned from Eastern Europe on one of their flights. At check-in, the man looking at his computer screen said, without so much as a ‘Good afternoon, Madam’: ‘You cannot take two pieces of hand baggage. You have a small case and a bag.’ ‘It’s not a bag, it’s a baguette,’ I said. ‘All women have handbags. OK, maybe not in Eastern Europe, but in the West we do. I’m not checking in my suede case as you will dirty it.’ Not happy: Liz Jones was less than impressed with the customer service of W!zz Air staff My male companion then said, anticipating a fight, that we’d buy a bag in duty free to put both in. Which we didn’t. At the X-ray machine, I refused to remove my Gucci boots without first being given a chair, as I refuse to hop, and a pair of white slippers, as the carpet was dirty. A burly woman marched me off to a cubicle to search me. At the gate, Computer Man came up to me again, probably because, instead of smiling (see above) and flirting, I’d told him I paid his wages. ‘You haven’t bought another bag,’ he said, again without introducing himself. I counted 22 fat Eastern European men boarding with two bags, and 11 with three! There were many, many rucksacks, and 24 bum bags! It’s discrimination, pure and simple. Bring on the skin-fold callipers!
