On a recent episode of Dig It, Zoe Ball was joined by The One Show’s Alex Jones, as her regular co-host Jo Whiley dealt with the loss of her father.
The temporary new duo wasted no time getting down to business, though, getting candid with their concerns about ageing, the pressures women find themselves under, and the tweakment which left Zoe "drooling" down her face.
As the pair got on to pressures of ageing in the public eye, Zoe shared, "I'll tell you, once I had something done to my lip, I hate these sort of lines here. I looked like a right smoker. And I thought I'd get something stabbed in those because it would make a difference.
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"And I went to lunch with my mum a couple of days afterwards and I was just literally drooling my drink down my face and she was wetting herself laughing. She's like, ‘What the hell have you done to yourself?’
"I was like, "Mum, I've had Botox in my lip to try and stop these lines.’ She went, ‘Well, that's worked out well for you, hasn't it?’
"And I just thought, you're absolutely right. Hit the nail on the head."
For Alex, while she insisted that it’s every woman’s right to choose whether they get treatments or tweakments, and she’s in the camp of "never say never", she worries that there’s a trend in not allowing women to age the way she saw her mother age.
She said, "I look at Mum and I still think she's so beautiful because she is comfortable in her own skin. All of it is just her, the way she's aged naturally. She still looks incredible.
Whereas, with the generations that came after, "We’re setting a precedent now where nobody's allowed to look old. And old isn't always bad. Old is just because you've lived a life. And what a privilege, by the way, to live a long life.
"I'm really scared for girls that are younger than us that are coming up who are in their late 20s, early 30s, and now everybody is starting to fiddle with their face."
"I'd never say never because you know that we're living up to impossible sort of goals, aren't we? Because everybody's doing it and so everybody looks like they never age any more than sort of 35, 40 anymore.
"Whoever wants to do it, go for your life… But there's so many other things that concern me, I'd really think twice about putting things into my body that don't necessarily need to be there."
Zoe agreed, and also turned the conversation to how other women, and the media in general, perpetuates the problem. She blames the way ageing is handled, arguing that women are often criticised for ageing and then criticised for the steps they take to hide the signs.
"That is the headline… whether a woman has had Botox or not, and whether she should have Botox, and now she's had Botox perhaps because she feels like she needs to look good in appearance and then you're giving her a hard time because she had Botox and now you're thinking her face doesn't move enough.
"It's like stop this. Stop the judging."
