JULIE BURCHILL: 'I find it a relief to be invisible'

JULIE BURCHILL, 64, on why she has had enough attention from men and is happy to enter a phase of ‘managed decline’

• English writer Julie Burchill tells YOU about how she came to embrace ageing 
• READ MORE: JULIE BURCHILL: How ironic that the BBC calls itself Auntie…

In my 50s, in conversation with a new person, I would make a point of stating my age even when it was utterly unrelated to the subject. Nine times out of ten, they’d say with genuine surprise, ‘No – you’re not!’ I still state my age – 64 – in this same immaterial way, but these days, no one contradicts me.

Observing other women cling to their looks feels like being a retired prizefighter; thank goodness I’m no longer in the ring taking all that punishment and reaching for all those prizes. I read in the online magazine Air Mail about the ‘revenge face’, which women on the verge of divorce from wealthy men splurge on before the final sundering.

Kevin Costner is alleging that his estranged wife Christine Baumgartner spent $188,500 on plastic surgery in one month. Also in that issue, a 60-year-old actress called Lisa Rinna sports a pair of lips that would look over the top on Towie. On the same day I read of a 33-year-old actress called Shenae Grimes being trolled for ageing ‘badly’ – otherwise known as daring to display laughter lines. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The thing that pleases me most is that, against all odds, I’ve been able to make a living from the thing I love doing and that thing depends on my brain rather than my body. As a writer, looks are my cherry on the top, not my entrée.

At one point in my 50s, I was so fat that a magazine printed a photo of Jabba the Hutt and said it was me. I found it a hoot. But then my son Jack committed suicide in 2015; I was so shocked that I lost the use of my legs for almost a month – and I was unable to eat properly for around three months. In that year, I lost around a third of my body weight.

Julie Burchill in 1995.  She says there is ‘something so pitiful about the deaths of cerebral women in pursuit of beauty’

The following year, when I started to recover, I was amazed to see how much younger I looked than I did before the most awful thing in my life happened. It was a contradiction that amazed and appalled me in equal measure.

When I was 57, the Evening Standard offered to send me to the famous Dr Michael Prager (‘Where do you suggest I inject you? You have no frown lines’). I was hooked. 

For the next four years I spent thousands of pounds on fillers and Botox – the nauseatingly named ‘tweakments’ that we always do ‘for ourselves’ so that we can look ‘rested.’

Then came lockdown. When I emerged from it, I found that I hadn’t missed being ‘freshened up’. Instead, I felt freed up. I’ve read many middle-aged women – not even old ones, like me – testifying to how ‘traumatic’ it is to be ‘invisible’; they mean to strangers, in public places.

I find it a relief. Strange men started following me in the street when I was 12 – I’ve had enough attention. Women, by the time they lose their looks, will have had all the sex they wanted and perhaps some they didn’t.

Of course, I understand that if your looks are your livelihood then the desire to preserve them becomes the most important thing in your life. But so many averagely attractive women appear to believe that they can keep their appeal market-fresh into middle and even old age.

I’ve had friends in their 60s saying before yet another cosmetic procedure that they’re going to be in ‘the best shape of my life’ in order to bag a rich man. None of them has managed it yet, as a rich man can take his pick of a far younger and better selection of lazy, parasitic females, if that’s his thing. It’s simply delusion.

Of course, I don’t crave the old days when women were considered old at 40 – but neither do I wish to wear a new straitjacket which insists that women (or men) must be ‘hot’ at 60, 70, 80 and beyond. Surely this is called gerontophilia?

The writer, pictured today, says she hasn’t had fillers in  years and ‘won’t be getting her crumbling teeth done’

I’m aware that I haven’t quite gone all the way towards completely losing interest in what I look like – I still put on a faceful of make-up every morning, have my hair dyed every month and over the past year I’ve gone from a size 20 to a size 16 due to experiments with slimming pills.

The latter can be rationalised by saying that fatness in old age means extra pressure on weakening joints. Hair and make-up, however, don’t have any health-giving perks, and are obviously matters of sheer vanity. In defence of this duplicity, I’d say that Rome didn’t decay in a day – I’m having a ‘managed decline’. But I haven’t had fillers in years, and I won’t be getting my crumbling teeth done – when they’re gone, they’re gone.

There’s something so pitiful about the deaths of cerebral women in pursuit of beauty: Professor Donda West, academic and mother of Kanye, dying at the age of 58 from complications following a ‘tummy tuck’, and the brilliant novelist Olivia Goldsmith, dying at 55 during a facelift.

When we attempt to preserve our looks – whether by liposuction or lipstick – we are hoping to defy the ageing process and ultimately, beneath all the wellness noise, postpone the moment of our death. How weird if vanity hastens it! Sure, a bit of Botox never killed anyone – but the kind of cosmetic intervention it takes to make a long-term difference can do just that.

If I google quotes by me about beauty, an excellent one pops up: ‘Youth and beauty are meant to be fuel, to be burned in pursuit of pleasure, and not fruit to be pickled in anticipation of some future famine.’

But even better is what David Bowie said: ‘Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.’ Once I was beautiful – now I’m not. What’s left is the real me – at last.

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