The Agony of Ageing

S6 E6: Popular wisdom used to be that people who "had work done" were desperate and sad, with many Australians eschewing cosmetic surgery lest they end up looking like frightened clowns in a wind tunnel. But that opinion has been lasered away with Australians now spending $850 million-a-year on cosmetic surgery and the figure growing at 25 per cent per annum. These days, it's not unusual for a 13 year-old to get liposuction and plane loads of Australian women to make Contiki-style tours to Thailand to get nipped and tucked. Then there's the surge in cosmetic injectables like botox and the desire to have surgical and nonsurgical buttock augmentations to look like Kim Kardashian and Beyonce. Former super model Jerry Hall is dead against the trend saying that cosmetic surgery makes "perfectly intelligent women look like lunatics". ''I'm against botox too," says Hall. "For one thing, it's very bad for your health to put poison in your forehead, and if you paralyse the expression, you don't feel emotions properly." But the trend is showing no sign of abating as an aging population looks in the mirror and says, "Is that me? I look old, but I don't feel old." Is it important to look like you feel? And is looking your age soon going to be a subversive act?