I realised that the cloak of invisibility is not fiction. It is in fact, over women of a certain age.

Yesterday I went through all my YouTube beauty or fashion channel subscriptions and unsubscribed from those where the women espoused natural beauty (pretty much all of them) and at the same time, have had facial procedures such as Botox, cheek fillers, lip injections, neck and face lifts.

It was disconcerting that I ended up unsubscribing from all of them.

To me, you cannot espouse one thing and then at the same time, do the opposite. Many of these women are also open with the procedures they’ve had done which is great. At least, you can make the choice as to whether you choose to ignore it or not.

Unfortunately for me, I can’t.

The advantage is that yes, they share, educate and advise but the same time, they’re normalising these procedures. The pressure is put on us to feel “less than” if we choose not to go down the route.

It’s prevalent now. It’s rare to see a woman untouched by a needle on her face. When you do, (especially if there are two women sitting side by side: one with facial surgeries the other not), we will always scrutinise the one who has aged and silently judge the way she has aged. If you have grey hair as well, you’ve really let yourself go!

When our screens show women my age – in their 50s+ – looking like a perpetual 35 – and looking remarkably similar to each other with un expressive faces, taut and shiny skin and full fat shiny lips, I worry about the message that this projects to younger women. That is, a woman cannot be allowed to age gracefully if she cannot compete.

Are women valued by their looks alone? If we have gone down this track then yes, I believe our western society does. If women were respected for more than just their beauty and looks and instead of their intellect and actions in life, an ageing woman would be revered for her care, her empathy and her wisdom.

Instead society has chosen to place an invisibility cloak over them.

The silly thing?

The ones who have defiantly ripped it off and choose to age gracefully are still deemed invisible.

The ones who wear it are invariably compelled to spend more money on beauty treatments, facial operations and procedures to come to that conclusion later in their lives.

Anyway, the cynic says it’s only a matter of time before women are erased and replaced by AI models/representations – and they’ll all be younger.