If there’s one place a girl really doesn’t want to stick her head on a Monday morning, before she’s had a coffee, it’s into a Visia machine – a space-age scanner that assesses the true state of your face.
I’m at the Harley Street Skin Clinic, where skin expert Lesley Reynolds tells me that from the results of my scan, she would guess I was 28 to 30 years old. I am actually 25, but this is why I am here.
Between struggling not to ladder my tights every day and remembering to pluck my eyebrows, worrying about ageing has always come way down on my list of appearance anxieties.
But I’ve come to notice friends my own age starting to fret about lines and wrinkles, censoring Facebook photos not for muffin tops but for crows feet. A recent Superdrug survey suggests 29 is the average age at which women become concerned about trying to look young, with wrinkles, a sagging face and droopy boobs being the top three fears.
Next month, Britain’s first Anti-Ageing Health & Beauty Show will be held at Olympia, west London. It’s officially aimed at the over-35 market but organisers say they’re already registering a lot of interest from much younger women.
‘Cosmedic coach’ Antonia Mariconda, a beauty writer who specialises in anti-ageing advice, will be appearing at the show. She tells me why more women in their twenties might need anti-ageing treatments than ever before.
‘A combination of factors are to blame,’ she says, ‘such as longer working hours, less sleep, stress, partying hard, rigorous diets, alcohol, smoking and environmental factors.’
Although it’s debatable whether my diet could be described as ‘rigorous’ the rest doesn’t sound a million miles away from my life. So I’ve decided to come and find out. Am I sticking a prematurely haggard head in the sand?
The ultimate results of my scan are not that bad, and I’m supposedly better than the average for women of a similar age and ethnicity when it comes to wrinkles, spots and general skin texture.
But it seems I came back from travelling in my early twenties with more than just an ill-advised nose piercing, I have sun damage all over my face.
Words by Amy Dawson – Reporter for Metro Newspaper
This article was printed in The Metro Newspaper 18 April 2012 : Copyright printed above is of Metro Newspaper kindly re-printed with thanks