Published in LMD Living - February 2016
Flip through any women’s’ publication today and you can’t
help but be regaled with advertisements on the latest fad in cosmetology. Nose
lifts, facelifts, tucks, implants… the thin line between enhancement and absurd
is being surgically erased. At the rate the business is increasing in Sri
Lanka, you’d think the country was teeming with the ugliest women in world. If you shamelessly scrutinize the photographs
in those high-society mags, half of Colombo seems to be using cosmetic surgery.
Especially the rich over-40 ladies in denial. Almost every single one of them
looks pinched and puckered to resemble a Picasso, or should that be Pollack, all
with the identical lemon-sucking expression on their frozen faces, their
waistlines tweaked like Barbie dolls and chests fluffed up like chickens in
corsets. Those who cannot afford the nips ‘n’ tucks opt for an armoury of make-up
instead, to unsuccessfully hide the flaws with enough facepaint to overwhelm a
mime artist.
It isn’t even to impress the boys (naaki uncles still insist on referring to themselves as boys, you
see). No no no… all this superficial
preening is purely to have one up on the fellow aunties. The minute Mrs. Social
Butterfly sees an invitation to her school re-union, she’s scuttling at
breakneck speed to the Zumba class, followed by a visit to her favourite salon,
for a makeover and ego-massage courtesy of the dramaqueen that is her stylist.
She will have her eyebrows plucked until she looks permanently surprised, her
flabulous body scrubbed, waxed and stuffed into a dress 5 sizes too tight and
her carbuncled feet squeezed into branded shoes. It doesn’t matter that she
falls flat on her face with every step, as long as her batchmates recognize the
brand.
If you walk into a Colombo nightclub, you might as well take
a pair of dark glasses with you, to shield your eyes from the dazzling display
of denial on the dance-floor. If the over-plumped lips and ‘bruise’ eye make-up
is not disturbing enough, then the fake hair extensions certainly will be. Dear
God, there is even a show of cleavage, dangling just above the knees. Have you
seen an aged aunty dance to a rave beat? That ‘booty’ will jerk scandalously in different
directions, trying to keep up with the young nubile teenage ones around it,
right up to the point where aunty suffers a heart attack from exertion, around
the second verse of the song. And yet, she will go on, determined not to be
seen as older and weaker.
In all reality, the weakness doesn’t come with age, but with
the fundamentalist approach towards reducing weight. The GM diet, paleo diets,
liquid diets, breatharian diets… there is no end to the madness and she will
try it all as she chases after the waistline that ran away years ago. The
Michelin tyre that’s nicely settled around her mid region does not stop her
from putting on her sexiest pair of leopard tights (shield your eyes, people)
and posing around like Beyoncé’s great grandmother. Those tights are often
paired with elongated talons, painted red on wrinkled fingers sporting the
largest bling ring she can find. A gift
from the latest toy boy old enough to be her son, that her husband doesn’t know about.
She certainly cuts the memorable figure, this modern, hybrid
female representation of the privileged mid-life crisis. Where did that lovely, radiant and homely
aunty with rosy cheeks and a freshly baked pie in her arms go, and who is this
human blue cheese in her stead?
You have to hand it to her … Grandma Barbie displays an
admirable zest for life and the confidence of a gorilla in heat. In a country
that frowns on a woman’s right to be whom she wants to be, these superficial
ladies are taking up arms in the form of fake designer handbags and making a
statement. Never surrender, never retreat, never be age-appropriate. Who can
argue with her search for eternal youth?
Certainly not the plastic surgeons.
Those guys are making a killing.
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