For refuseniks such as me who don’t use cosmetic tweaks such as Botox and fillers to make ourselves look younger, life has now become more fraught, having to deal with the semaglutide jabs such as Ozempic which offer the possibility to drop several dress sizes.
Those who don’t indulge in these treatments increasingly have to accept that we knowingly make ourselves look less, shall we say ‘fresh’ and dumpier, than we have the option to.
The big change is not the fact that such interventions are widely available but that whereas they were previously kept under wraps, women (like Nadine Dorries writing in last week’s Daily Mail) are bringing their habit out in the open.
No longer do they hope others think their newly-relaxed face or slim body is the result of self-control or a lucky twist of fate. Now, they don’t pretend that their changed appearance is for any other reason than through the use of these drugs. This has made the whole question of how we all choose to look a very different game.
Those who hold off can’t even experience the smug whiff of satisfaction we might have done when others were not being honest about their behaviour.
A woman injects the drug Ozempic into her arm for weight loss at home. Those who don’t indulge in these treatments increasingly have to accept that we knowingly make ourselves look less, shall we say ‘fresh’ and dumpier
Pens for the Ozempic drug sit on a production line to be packaged at the Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s site in Hillerod, Denmark
Alexandra Shulman explains why slim, smug jabbers give her the needle. Users are happily telling everyone about whether they take Ozempic or Mounjaro and chattily swapping the phone numbers of beauty technicians who can help get rid of the peaky Ozempic face
Instead, users are happily telling everyone about whether they take Ozempic or Mounjaro and chattily swapping the phone numbers of beauty technicians who can help get rid of the peaky Ozempic face. Their portrait is still propped up in the attic but the difference is they don’t mind everyone knowing it’s there.
Try as I might to adopt the attitude that other people’s bodies are their own business, there’s still this niggling annoyance about being in the company of those who are shimmying around in their newly pharmaceutically enhanced slender physiques and taught jaws.
Yes, it’s a hard life choosing not to stick needles into my face and stomach but, if I’m going to continue to resist that option, I’ve got to stop being so irritated by those that have taken a different route.
Meanwhile, perhaps they could help a smidge by stopping the practice of ordering vast amounts of fattening food in restaurants and then not eat it due to the appetite-repressing effect. Leaving the rest of us to stick to old-fashioned willpower, vainly trying to stop picking at our side orders of chips which we try so hard to avoid.
Lights out, time for separate bedrooms?
Differing attitudes towards the light between those who share a bed can be as tricky as room temperature preferences. At the request of my boyfriend David, we’ve had blackout blinds fitted which, added to the clocks going back, means I am unhappily ensconced in a sensory deprivation pit.
Where, once, rose-fingered dawn crept through the curtains, gently moving me into the new day, now I have to haul myself out of sleep into the pitch black and then fumble my way towards the longed-for daylight next door. Could this mean separate bedrooms coming soon?
Few Rivals to this raunchy throwback
Alex Hassell in The Rivals. Who knew that a series featuring predatory sexual behaviour, upper crust lifestyles and cringeworthy puns would be so popular?
Almost everyone I have spoken to has enjoyed the Disney+ adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, with its over-the-top throwback naughtiness and stereotyped Eighties characters. Who knew that a series featuring predatory sexual behaviour, upper crust lifestyles and cringeworthy puns would be so popular? Let’s hope, to use a Dame Jilly word, it encourages some more ‘jolly’ shows to be commissioned, rather than grim stories about the underbelly of life.
Not a novel way to spend one’s days
The writer Nick Hornby has said that, at 67, he has given up reading fiction. He explains that at least with non-fiction, even bad non-fiction, you might learn something, while indifferent fiction is a waste of the time he has left.
Calculating what activities are a waste of our precious time strikes me as a dangerous route to embark on. A bad novel might not add to the richness of my days but it’s no more pointless than so much else of what I do. Where do I start? There’s the hours spent listening to the news on three different radio stations offering the same information on repeat. The unnecessary trip to the local deli for a cappuccino when it would be quicker to make a cup of coffee at home. An embarrassing amount of time playing games on my phone and hours spent scrolling through Instagram watching videos of babies’ sleep habits that seem to fill my feed.
Nick Hornby. The writer has said that, at 67, he has given up reading fiction. He explains that at least with non-fiction, even bad non-fiction, you might learn something, while indifferent fiction is a waste of the time he has left
Then there’s checking my favourite online clothes shops to see if there’s anything I can’t resist and looking up the price of flights for city breaks that I am not going to take. If I add up all that time, there would probably be more than enough hours to write a bad novel myself.
No Budget frights for these non-doms
If non-doms are fleeing the UK, a drive through London’s Kensington on Halloween proved they haven’t yet done so. The occupants of these Non-Dom Central streets put on the most ostentatious displays of extravagance. Forget a carved pumpkin and a few white cobwebs, each double-fronted white stucco house seemed to have employed interior decorators, florists, caterers and entertainers to turn their front garden into a mega-bucks movie set.
Hordes of proud parents stood in the street, recording the events on their phones. No worries about the implications of Rachel Reeves’ Budget round these parts.
Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves poses with the red Budget Box as she leaves 11 Downing Street, in central London, on October 30, 2024
Mitzi is so brave to reveal her scars
Last week, I wrote that Primark featured a transgender boy in its window display. The company has since told me the poster, part of a breast cancer awareness campaign, did not feature a trans boy, but a woman called Mitzi who has bravely allowed herself to be photographed with her scars after having a double mastectomy.
My sincere apologies to Mitzi and Primark for the confusion.
