With their supple skin and unlined faces, the stars of today refuse to give in to the ageing process. Some admit to treatments like Botox, others deny it. But why do women in the public eye feel they cannot age - and what pressure does it put on the rest of us?
A couple of months ago, a photograph was hungrily circulated around gossip magazines and websites and, at a glance, you would have had trouble explaining why.
It showed an ordinary-looking woman in her mid-40s, out shopping in California, her specs on, cardigan buttoned. The clue was in the picture of Madonna that ran beside it.
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The anonymous woman was identified as the singer's younger sister, Melanie Henry, and readers were encouraged to compare and contrast.
The difference was striking. Because while Melanie, snapped unawares, looked as good as any woman could hope, Madonna seemed to have been beamed from another planet.
Where Melanie had the natural features of middle age - mild creases beside her nose and beneath her eyes, for instance - Madonna's face was eerily unlined, skin glowing, cheeks conspicuously plump.
It's not so much that, at 50, she looked much younger than her sister, as that she had no signs of age whatsoever. Not a crinkle on her brow, crow's feet by her eyes or the slightest sag to her cheeks.
Of course, Madonna isn't the only famous woman to look ageless. Over the past ten years, the public face of ageing seems to have changed completely and many of the world's most prominent women hardly seem to grow older at all.
It's not so much that they always look young, exactly, or that they have the tightly pulled skin of traditional facelifts.
But they do look completely different to their non-famous peers. Where other women's lips recede, theirs stay plump.
Where others have laughter lines, they remain undimpled. And when describing how they stay so taut, the explanation is generally this. They moisturise. They drink water. They work out. They eat well. They avoid the sun. They don't smoke.
Fab at 50: Madonna is rumoured to have had a ribbon lift
Which is enough to make the average healthy-living woman wince while inspecting her own wrinkles.
Occasionally, someone does break rank and admits to having had treatments - but it's always in 'the past'.
Last week, Kylie Minogue ended speculation when she admitted: 'I've tried Botox … but I'm preferring to be a lot more natural these days.'
Minogue added that she's 'definitely not one of those people who says: "You shouldn't do this"… everyone individually can do what they want'.
Geri Halliwell says a similar thing in the latest edition of Red magazine ('I had some (Botox) squirted into my forehead and it gave me a headache'), echoing the comments of Jennifer Aniston earlier this year, who said she had 'tried Botox once and it was really not good for me. I felt like I had a weight on my head'.
Courteney Cox, Aniston's former Friends co-star, said last year that: 'I went to this doctor once, and he said: "Oh, let me do it just here and here and here." And I was miserable … It's not that I haven't tried Botox - but I hated it.'
For other performers, though, the rumours persist. Magazines have asked: 'Has Madonna had cheek implants?' and 'Has Madonna had the ribbon lift?'
(This procedure apparently involves a 'flexible, tube-like device' covered in tiny hooks being inserted beneath the skin on the face. The hooks then attach themselves to the subject's tissue, before the device is hoiked upwards.)
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But the source of most speculation is probably Nicole Kidman. The smoothness of her skin has caused film critic Stephanie Zacharek to wonder whether her forehead is made of melamine, and Dr Martin Braun - who runs the biggest Botox clinic in Canada - to say he believes she has been an 'enthusiastic user' of Botox. Kidman has denied this.
In 2007, she said that: 'To be honest, I am completely natural. I have nothing in my face or anything. I wear sunscreen and I don't smoke. I take care of myself. And I'm very proud to say that.'
Madonna, meanwhile, has stated she is 'not going to have a press conference if I have plastic surgery. But I have said many times that I think about it, like everybody, and I sure don't rule it out'.
What is beyond doubt is that, in general, the aesthetic of ageing has changed, and many women in the public eye are having cosmetic work done, starting ever younger.
Speaking to cosmetic doctor Tracy Mountford, who specialises in 'non-surgical skin rejuvenation' - including Botox and other injectables - she says that many well-known women will 'have had quite a bit done to maintain that "natural" good look.
'People would be staggered. The majority of people (in the public eye) will be having something done'.
Yet in some ways, this is completely understandable. After all, ageism is alive and well. As Anna Ford said after leaving the BBC in 2006: 'How many presenters do you know on television who are over the age of 60?'
In 2002, the actress Rosanna Arquette made the documentary Searching For Debra Winger, in which she and other Hollywood stars questioned the paucity of roles for older women.
Wrinkle free: Courtney Cox said she had Botox but hated it
Until very recently, older women were simply expected to fade from view. And the result is that women are still in the earliest stages, historically, of negotiating how to remain in the public eye.
So far, the most popular approach seems to be to deny the ageing process altogether.
Virgina Blum, author of Flesh Wounds, an analysis of cosmetic surgery culture, points out that a performer's looks are 'their livelihood, and we do know that actors - and especially actresses - can't even really appear on screen unless they look a certain way.
'So they're constantly forced to manufacture the look of youth and keep producing it'.
It's also true that performers are under more scrutiny than ever before, at the mercy of both high-definition TV - which lays bare the tiniest 'imperfections' - and tabloid culture.
It's an environment that is at once trashy and highly exacting: every hangnail (torn skin around nail) a sin, every eye-bag a crime.
In the face of such constant surveillance, perhaps it's not surprising that women would want to erase marks that might otherwise be circled with an exclamation of disgust.
And the tools are now widely available. The stereotype of a woman who has work done was once of someone in their 50s or over, who visited a cosmetic surgeon in the hope of having a decade or two erased through a facelift - her skin sliced open, pulled tight and stitched.
But since Botox was first used for cosmetic purposes 20 years ago - and particularly since 2002, when it won approval in the U.S. from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the removal of frown lines - the landscape has been transformed.
Botox admission: Kylie Minogue said she has had the treatment to maintain her looks
Now the onus is increasingly on 'non-invasive' treatments that don't require scalpels but involve substances being injected into the face, such as Botox, which reduces wrinkles by temporarily paralysing the muscles.
There's also Juvéderm, a wrinkle-filler made of hyaluronic acid; or Restylane Vital, also made of hyaluronic acid, which promises to 'counter the effects of sun damage and provide deep dermal hydration'. (Juvéderm and Restylane Vital are also approved by the FDA.)
Non-invasive treatments have boomed over the past decade. In 2007, 55,000 Botox injections were administered in the UK.
When it comes to these procedures, the focus isn't necessarily on rolling back time, but on starting in your 20s or 30s and maintaining the status quo.
Dr Jean-Louis Sebagh (also known as 'King Botox') recently said that 'preventing the ageing process is better, where possible, than correcting it, non?
'If a woman comes to me at 35 or 40 and we treat her every three to four months, I can keep her looking that way for 20 years or more'.
Non-invasive procedures appeal because they're not radical but incremental, meaning there's less chance of a sudden, major change in one's looks.
The downside is that they have to be regularly updated. Mountford says hyaluronic acid products require a top-up every six to nine months, so once you embark on these procedures, you enter an ongoing process of revision, your face an endless work in progress.
And the cost can be astronomical. While a year's worth of Botox treat-ments and dermal fillers might cost, say, £2,000, over 20 years that comes to £40,000.
'Completely natural': Nicole Kidman claims her smooth skin is down to a healthy lifestyle
And that's not taking into account the chance you may be tempted by some of the many other procedures available. Not that the cost affects the Hollywood set.
These procedures are so popular that they've been credited with a whole new aesthetic for women in the public eye - a specific 'face' shared by many female stars.
Where facelifts were often synonymous with the 'windtunnel' look, the era of injectables is all about filling out the face, replacing lost contours.
It's a look that was described in New York magazine last year as The New New Face - with 'the Mount Rushmore cheekbones, the angular jawline, the smoothed forehead, the plumped skin, the heart-shaped face'.
The sad thing is that, while these cosmetic procedures are supposed to lengthen a performer's career, they often cut them short.
We all know of actors who suddenly appear with painfully enlarged lips, weirdly raised eyebrows, or stunned foreheads.
Over the past few years, casting directors have talked about the difficulties they experience as a result, with Richard Hicks, who cast the musical Hairspray saying: 'There's no way to light them so that they don't look hideous. For the most part, what I find moving is the truth, and once you've had your face worked on, it's often not the same thing.'
So what does this culture of ageless celebrity mean for ordinary women? Well, for one, the beauty standard we're expected to live up to is, specifically, a surgical one - which is complicated by the fact that this is so rarely acknowledged.
The result is that we are presented with image after image of women who are astoundingly unlined, and are forced to compare ourselves with them.
If we buy into the idea that these people are 'naturally' unwrinkled, the comparison is always likely to leave us wanting.
As Virginia Blum says: 'It puts women on high alert all the time. I think it's very anxiety-inducing and it causes a certain amount of unhappiness because it's asking people to hyper-scrutinise themselves.'
These images also encourage women to have cosmetic procedures, which can go wrong.
In Britain, the use of cosmetic fillers is largely unregulated, and there are stories of rogue treatments leaving lumps beneath the skin.
These treatments also involve us buying into a culture that invites us to critique how we look, what we'd like to change - and then holds our happiness beyond arm's reach.
'The cycle of gratification is endless,' says Blum, 'because what will happen? Oh, I get an extra 17 years - but then what happens at the end of the 17 years?'
She also believes that once you start having cosmetic procedures, it's difficult to stop.
'If you have a good result, you're in it. And if you have a bad result, you're in it, because you have to fix it. So either way, it's addictive.'
Do we want these to be the terms on which we're allowed to participate in public life?
It's natural to hold actors and performers up as role models, but to do so in this case is faintly ridiculous, since, of all of us, they are under the most intense pressure regarding their looks.
It is understandable that they would bow to the most punishing ideals, but that doesn't mean that the average woman or man should.
Instead, we have to ask ourselves whether we really want to paralyse our facial muscles, wipe away all signs of age and accept that only by looking oddly youthful for as long as possible are we allowed any place in public life.
If we do, then we're bending to a sexist and ageist ideal. And, let's face it, obedience is never a good look.
© Guardian News and Media 2009.
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