Renee or Changing Faces.

So here's the thing: the braying mob have their poxy potatoes gathered up in their hessian aprons and are hurling them with all the vigour of the ladies' choir spotting a strumpet creeping out of the local minister's bedchamber. Now... we can't slut shame anymore, we can't fat shame, but yet we can rip a woman's appearance to shreds if God forbid, cross thyselves, cosmetic enhancement is suspected. I sniff a double standard, but I wonder why?

Yes, of course we can dig down deep to that existential argument which says our face reflects our life's journey, our true soul. But I don't accept that, as our protean faces change naturally as we age anyway, none of us will keep the face we're born with; osteoblasts and osteoclasts are the architects behind the fleshy arras, my 21 year old visage no longer resembles my 50 year old one, bone reabsorption has given me a smaller jaw, my nose has lengthened and my upper lip has retracted, our faces are not cast in stone but in malleable material. Nature vs. surgeon, both will leave their thumbprint, I refuse to think less of anyone who chooses the latter. I wonder if we are just hardwired to berate other women, is it part of that old evolutionary desperation to vie with each other? I wholeheartedly believe in a woman's right to choose, whether that be abortion, botox or a facelift, I think we do our sex a disfavour by placing limits on their expected behaviour. We are legion and contain multitudes. On the one hand we aim to respect a woman's right to do as she chooses. We try not to judge what she puts in her mouth but we find it harder to resist a jibe about what she puts in her face. When women change how they look, their neighbours have always gossiped over the fence or in the washhouse but now, thanks to the internet, we see what everyone does and we feel obliged to pipe up.
I'm not saying we should pipe down necessarily, she is, after all, a public figure who is recognised, or was recognisable, and it wouldn't be natural to pretend that nothing has changed but in this new age of social media how do we rediscover our manners?
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