I had just stepped out of the shower and was drying my face when I first noticed it.

IT.

My first wrinkle.

At first I thought it was a smudge of something I had left on my face, so I tried to rub it off.

Hard.

Strangely, it wouldn’t move.

It stared back at me from my forehead, silently mocking me with its mere presence.

My fingers rushed to trace over it and see if any of its cousins had decided to take up permanent residence on my face.

They had.

It had brought its mirror twin along for the ride into oldness.

I think I must have put on a kilo of moisturiser that morning.

I couldn’t understand how my skin could betray me so.

My face has obviously spent a lot of time molding itself into a look of surprise/shock/amusement, because my traitorous skin has decided it has had enough of renewing itself and decided to save itself the trouble of making those lines, by just leaving them there.

But still, hadn’t I taken care of it?

Didn’t I put sunscreen on every single day, drink my two litres of water, refrain from sugars (well, kind of, as long as you don’t view chocolate, cake, biscuits, ice-cream and desserts as sugar), as well as cleanse, tone and moisturise twice a day?

I mean that stuff is hard work.

And expensive.

The way I see it, we gals can’t wait to become women and then the moment we reach the age we dreamed about as kids, we spend the next 50 years or so desperately trying to turn back the clock.

I mean, I used to watch my mum put on her face creams and make-up and thought it was the most glamorous thing in the world.

I would reverently look at those little sweet-smelling pots of magic like they were the holy grail of womanhood.

And now I would give my entire bathroom cupboard for the youthful complexion I took for granted.

But I’ve never taken a fight lying down, so I took myself off to the beauty counter to see what could be done to combat this latest battle my body has decided to wage.

And the absurdity of the experience only ended up reinforcing my surprise/shock/amusement wrinkles.

“This,” a scarily smiley woman said, referring to a pot of moisturiser half the size of my hand, “has the equivalent of 5000 litres of French spring water hydration in it.”

But wouldn’t that just make it water-logged, I asked, trying to keep a straight face?

“Oh no,” she answered in all seriousness.

“Hydration is the essence of beauty.”

Her scary smile didn’t show any signs of slipping, so I decided it was best to back away slowly.

My retreating steps took me straight to a counter which promised “natural beauty”, and as far as I could tell, was free of French spring water.

But this woman didn’t only find a problem with my face.

“You’ve come here just in time,” she said with a severe look.

“Here, you need this.”

Opening my palm, I found neck serum.

“Your neck is one of the first places to show age and yours is … how old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-six,” I answered warily.

“Well yours is definitely starting to show your age,” she said.

I couldn’t help noticing that her neck had a decidedly pulled look to it, but I let her continue espousing her wisdom.

“And your hands. I couldn’t help noticing you have some wrinkles on your palms.”

I am pretty sure that everyone has wrinkles on their palms – if we didn’t, how would palm-readers make a living? But I stayed quiet.

She loaded me up with samples and a stern warning to use them “before it was too late”.

Too late for what, I wondered.

Would my neck just fall off?

The next lady won me over by telling me my neck was fine, but in the next breath she crushed me by asking me what I planned to do “about your eye problem?”

“You know, that blackness.”

“What?” I said awkwardly. “You mean black isn’t in this season?”

“I think the skin around your eyes is severely dehydrated. You need this. It hydrates, tightens, brightens and opens the eye area.”

I thought my eyelids opened the eye area, but it turns out I was wrong.

The tiny tube she handed me cost about the equivalent of my week’s pay and when I made my surprise/shock/amusement face, she frowned.

At least I think she did. Her face didn’t move, but her eyeballs did move a little downward.

“Isn’t your skin worth it?”

And she discovered, by moving in way too close and personal for a first meeting, that while my eyes needed opening, my pores needed closing.

For which I needed a pre-moisturising moisturiser. Then a moisturiser.

Which I set by using the after-moisturising facial mist.

And then cover with the hydrating, airbrushing foundation, now with SPF15.

And, as I looked around and saw perfectly beautiful women putting on their serious faces to listen to how the latest “ scientific breakthrough” was going to turn back the clock, all I could think was that a man would never fall for this.

No one would try to sell a man three different moisturisers.

A man would never take “neck serum” seriously.

They just wouldn’t go for it.

I mean, Alex washes his face while I cleanse. He dries while I tone. I use skin hydrating serum, while he moisturises. He uses shampoo, while my hair is treated to hair soothing balm for dry and rebellious hair.

There must be a whole heap of French women with hair staying up way too late and talking back to them for someone to come up with “soothing balm for rebellious hair”.

Seriously.

I left the shopping centre feeling worse about myself then when I walked in.

And that is exactly their plan.

Coco Channel and her chums have a billion-dollar industry revolving around us feeling bad about ourselves.

So I’ve decided not to.

I’ll wear my wrinkles as badges of honour for a life, thus far, well lived.

Besides, isn’t beauty supposed to come from the inside?