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Áilín Quinlan: Face facts, ladies, and abandon this desire for an eternal youth

27 0
10.06.2026

When someone first mentioned to me that girls in their mid-teens were getting Botox injections in a bid to pre-empt ‘ageing’, I didn’t believe it.

That was a few years ago. The mere idea that a child would believe s/he needed Botox was so deeply chilling, I just refused to think about it.

Now I believe it. Now, it makes sense. We live in an age where the pressure to continually look good and to post evidence of yourself looking utterly, flawlessly fabulous is beyond terrifying.

Forget plastic surgery for a minute.

Think of the American millionaire/billionaire/whatever who had a plasma exchange with his teenage son in an effort to reverse the natural ageing process in his body. Think of the company offering transfusions of teenage plasma to reinvigorate (extremely) affluent oldsters.

Think of the LED light therapy masks, which, it is claimed, do everything from stimulating the production of collagen to zapping spots.

The first time I saw one of those was in a film. An actress was casually wearing one in bed. She looked so incredibly creepy, I had to google it.

Think of the weighted face ball. The vitamin shots. The peptides. The €2,000 facial skin creams. Resveratrol. Think, if you can bear it, of Vladimir Putin, who reputedly believes in the........

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