Accept The Inevitable, Duck

Expensive vanity or a benefit to the nation? Staying seventeen into your seventies, a bikini figure with a sixty inch bust in your mid-eighties? A wrinkle free beautiful face, perfect features, turning heads at ninety.?

Cosmetic, not medical corrective surgery, necessary, remedial, but cosmetic ranging from a removed freckle to a complete re-assembly. An exercise in illusion, delusion. And sometimes regret.

One day, a few years ago, like the Ramsbottoms, seeking further amusement, in their case they paid and went into Blackpool Zoo, I went to the Art Gallery. The Walker. I spent some time there, luckily not eaten by lions, writing pieces: prose and poetry, giving voices and backstories to some of the paintings. One involved cosmetic botox.

Pin-Up 1963 for Francis Bacon by Sam Walsh

I’ve filled up. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to have botox. Look at my face. Look me in the eye, the left one, and tell me honestly what you think. I know, a dreadful mistake. I’ve covered it with Golden Syrup Pancake make-up to try and disguise it. But it hasn’t worked.

‘Just have a bit of work done, Sweetie. I’ll pay.’ It was his idea. It was Lucian who persuaded me. The sweet-talking swine. I was his pin-up but now I’m pun-up no more. Now he’s seeing someone else. He won’t even look at me. I said, Lucian you are the one who wanted me to have Botox, said I’d look better, more desirable, with filler. He said, ‘Yes but I didn’t mean there.’

Perhaps this explains the rift.

Is hair dye an intervention, cosmetic but not surgical, similar to nail polish, temporary, whereas the artificial boobs are designed to be permanent? Remove them and what fills the space?

Generally I’m against it but I do think the Queen should have had Charles’ ears pinned back. As a child he must have suffered and the remedy was simple. Not perhaps the Queen’s decision; a piece of firm foot-placing, stamping, by the Duke of Edinburgh, with his rigid views on real men. A real man would want to do what was in his son’s best interest.

And who doesn’t weep over the tragedy of Brigitte Bardot those sex kitten looks a short-lived fantasy turned to early decay with unpleasant unexpected bagging in the facial and neck area? No matter how kind-hearted to animals she is don’t we look away from her sagging fleshy face, this sign of mortal decay? Aren’t we gratefully, if begrudgingly, admiring of women like Zsa Zsa, Joan and Mae who go under the knife to maintain our illusion,. Or is that look just as grotesque? Is the only answer to die young like Marilyn and Diana? I won’t mention Kay Burley’s face looking as tight as a cat’s bum, it’s just the beautiful Ophelia is displaying hers at the moment.

Myself? There’s nothing I want to change, lose or gain. Not I hasten to add that I have anything that couldn’t be improved. A new set of teeth? Yes, as long as they’re not too expensive. It’s all come with me this far it might as well come to the grave. And I’m lucky that my family genes haven’t taken me down Brigitte’s route. My attitude slightly different to this woman. Desperately trying everything except a good surgeon.

The evil queen

Old Queens
The old queen constantly looks in the mirror,
her reflection abhorrent, it nevertheless
demands her attention, inspection.
How far has the corruption spread?
Hideous, fascination commanding
those once bright eyes to view
the decomposing time-ravaged features
of her once beautiful face.
Her loss makes her more frightful.
Haggard, jealous, spiteful, ruthless,
tormented. Relentlessly she searches
for a sacrifice, an offering, a bribe;
unmercifully she tears off the butterfly’s wings,
guts the puppy, sheds the kid’s blood.
Offers up a prayer.
Her face doesn’t change.

Thanks for reading, Jeanie Buckingham