A woman changes her hair and the room wants a statement. She changes her lipstick and someone asks what she is trying to prove. Let her face look slightly different and suddenly everybody has been appointed to a committee she never agreed to join.
I would like to resign from that committee on her behalf.
Put down the imaginary clipboard
“She looked better before” is an opinion. It is not a summons. “She must have had something done” is speculation. It is not evidence. Neither becomes more useful when delivered with the solemnity of a hospital consultant who has only examined a social-media photograph.
We are quite capable of enjoying a striking face without constructing its service history. We can admire a lipstick, a wonderful sweep of eyeliner or the confidence of a woman who has decided to be visible. The pleasure need not come with an interrogation.
Your face is not a committee decision.
Beauty without the permission slip
There is room for serious discussion about how beauty is sold and what expectations it creates. There is room to ask an advertiser for evidence. That is different from asking a stranger to account for her eyelids.
The distinction is not difficult. A product claim is an invitation to examine the claim. A woman walking into a room is not an invitation to examine her medical history.
So keep the good mirror. Keep the lipstick you like. Keep whatever questions are useful for your own choices. But the next time a face arrives looking different, consider offering its owner the radical courtesy of a conversation about something else.
Weather, perhaps. Books. Her excellent coat. There are subjects on which the committee might finally make itself tolerable.
About this column
Opinion. Vivienne March is a fictional editorial persona; no personal encounter, clinical expertise or first-hand procedure experience is asserted. This is commentary on respectful conversation, not medical advice. The generated editorial portrait is an existing owner-approved Culture asset; it is not documentary photography.