Contains spoilers.
When Stanley Kubrick needed a truly disturbing haunting for the bathroom of room 237 of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980), he latched onto one of the most effective and elemental terrors imaginable: an old woman. More …
Kylie Minogue’s glorious artifice
George Orwell once said that, by 50, everyone has the face he deserves. These days, most 50-something female celebrities seem to have exactly the same face, which they paid for. Cheeks are stuffed like upholstery. Foreheads are stretched taut as …
The beauty of Botox
One of my closest friends is allergic to Botox, which was exactly as terrible a discovery as you might expect. It started while she was still at the doctor’s office, with a burning sensation at the injection site. (“That’s just …
Selfies have made you ugly
Modern man, wrote the social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1956, “has been transformed into a commodity”. Scroll through social media, and you will see this transformation is absolute. On one side, we are asked to rate glamorous, increasingly similar-looking people …
Women can’t be beautiful
I don’t care that much about my appearance. I don’t waste time chasing after arbitrary beauty standards. I get my hair done, though, and I’ve started to have it coloured since I turned 40, but that’s very low maintenance: four …