I look back with fondness on the days when all it took to look decent was a quick shake of the hair and a slick of Vaseline. Now I am 40, and getting ready for the school run requires an increasing succession of potions, lotions and unguents – and even then the results are not exactly traffic-stopping.

To describe a woman as “high-maintenance” used to be something of an insult, indicating a selfish, vain creature, almost certainly with too much time and money (usually someone else’s) on her hands. In our mothers’ day there was a fine line between “not letting yourself go” and being seen as a self-obsessed tart. My grandmother would no more have gone for a facial or a manicure than she would have run down Bromley High Street in her underwear – but she fasted once a week to keep her figure in check.

That, though, was another world. Today’s women not only control their own finances but have unprecedented access to affordable beauty treatments, and far fewer scruples about making use of them. Once-mystical techniques such as waxing, threading and Botox are readily available on the high street – and as the technology becomes more accessible, the pressure to use it mounts. Why let your hair go grey when modern colours are so easy to use? Why succumb to wrinkles when you can have them filled in your lunch hour? If thread veins appear round your nostrils, have them zapped.

Even in these postfeminist days, when exfoliation and emancipation are accepted ideological bedfellows, some will resist on principle. Many, however, will give in, especially when confronted by so many images of impeccably groomed celebrities. For my daughter’s generation, the idea of going on a date without prior depilation will probably be as unthinkable as leaving home without brushing your teeth.

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Background

• Welcome to The Times Health Club, by the editor of Body&Soul

• Getting started with The Times Health Club

• Ten good reasons to keep a food diary

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• The Times Health Club

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• Age defiance: nutrition

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Whether this high-maintenance trend constitutes progress is a moot point. It’s up to every woman to find her own level, based on how much time, money and effort she is prepared to expend. Personally, I think life is too short to worry unduly about ragged cuticles; but I would never wear sandals without first having a pedicure. And it does depend on your stage in life: what seems unthinkable in your twenties may be a real problem in your thirties, and major milestones such as pregnancy and menopause can alter the body in radical, mostly unwelcome, ways.

Here, then, is an age-and-stage guide to the most common aesthetic problems to afflict the female body – and some of the solutions.

AGE 16-26

Problem

Problem? What problem? Most women over the age of 30 look back on these years as a time of untrammelled body bliss, when joints and muscles functioned as they should, when weight gain was relatively easy to keep at bay and overall health was at its peak. Drink, drugs and late nights never seem to take their toll – but believe me, they will. Now is the time to start cultivating good habits.

Solution

Regular exercise and healthy eating will pay off later in life. Sun protection is also vital at this stage, so please don’t fry yourself: sun damage is one of the leading causes of premature skin ageing – today’s healthy glow is tomorrow’s wrinkly décolletage. Use an SPF product in the sun (at least factor 25 for lying on the beach, 15 if you’re just out and about) or, better still, fake your tan. Sexual health is also extremely important: take risks now and you may regret it enormously in later years. If you have taken a risk, don’t waste time and energy worrying about it. Instead, get a check-up.

AGE 26-35

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