Aside from being unhealthy, unsuccessful and dying alone, anti-ageing is apparently the new thing keeping us in our 20s awake at night. I remember when I woke up after a massive bender and found a wrinkle. It was barely noticeable – and I'd always been a staunch advocator of growing old gracefully and un-Botoxed – but I went straight to Boots and dropped a cool £60 on a preventative ageing day cream. It's worth pointing out that at this stage in my life I was sofa surfing because I couldn't afford to put down a deposit on a flat and had no job.
'It all started two or three years ago,' Dr Michael Prager, a leading Harley Street cosmetic dermatologist, tells *The Debrief *on the rise in younger women coming in for preventive and anti-ageing procedures. 'For years, I didn't see anyone under the age of 30, so we didn't make a point of maintaining treatments for younger women because it was pointless. Now, we've been building them up to cope with the increased demand.'
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As the skin loses elasticity, wrinkles form and there's a fairly simple way (well, simple on paper) that this can be prevented. 'UV light, carcinogenics and other toxins create free radicals, and if you have more free radicals, you age quicker,' he explains. 'I think our life and our environment is more ageing these days. More and more people grow up on a bad diet, and it's difficult to avoid environmental poison. We even have proof to show that plastic changes the way people age, and 20 years ago, you didn't get a sunburn in England but now you can turn red.'
So far, so understandable that girls like 24-year-old Remy boast anti-ageing skincare routines worth upwards of £300 – a regime that needs replacing every few months. This, of course, doesn't include regular replacements, and anti-ageing facials and treatments she gets for special events and birthdays. 'I have a pre-cleansing oil, a face wash, an exfoliator, a toner, a gel to mix with moisturiser, a serum, crows feet specific gel, and oil capsules,' she says. 'The only way I can afford it is because I'm still living at home – as are a hell of a lot of post-grad Londoners my age.'
Michelle, 27, who works in content strategy, has been spending nearly £1,500 a year on age prevention products alone since the age of 21. 'I'd always had a pretty good skincare routine, but when I found out that your skin starts ageing from your mid 20s onwards, I went straight out and invested in my first ever anti-ageing face and eye cream,' she remembers. 'Plus, I was hoping to make amends for the years of suffering I'd put my poor skin through at uni. I've always been a firm believer in that old "prevention is better than cure" adage.'
So what's the fallout from all this spending? Well, instead of scaling down, they tend to just prioritise the rest of their lives – often in extreme ways. Michelle, for example, prefers products to socialising ('I'd always opt for buying the anti-ageing cosmetics over spending money on clothes or meals out, or a big night out') and Sophie, 26, who spends around £150 every two months on preventive ageing miracles, once went two days without food. 'I'd blown all my money on my anti-ageing routine, and couldn't afford to eat. I have to say that I felt a bit stupid about that but it becomes a bit of an addiction! Once you start using this stuff, you don't want to stop in case all the good work you've been forking out for every month is undone.'
For Sophie, this new fear is synonymous with societal pressure to be achieving more, and earlier. 'I guess it's because I'd quite like to have kids at 30 and I'm nowhere near ready for that now, so there's a ticking time bomb situation. I would quite like to freeze time until I get my shit together,' she tells The Debrief.
With one in four 22 to 30-year-olds forced to live with their parents for financial reasons and more graduates than ever stuck in under-employed (ie part-time) non-careersy jobs, perhaps it's not urprising we're more reticent to get wrinkles than older generations. To put it bluntly: it feels unfair to develop an old face while you sit in your rented apartment eating oats for the third time that week because your salary doesn't cover the fact you broke your phone. When you get older, the upshot of losing your youthful exuberance is that you've got experience, a home, a mortgage and a really fit husband. This isn't happening to a lot of us right now.
It doesn't help that we're conditioned by the uber-successful Caras, Mileys and J-Laws all knocking about the early 20 mark and kicking ass. Lorde is 18 FFS. And it equally doesn't help that we venerate women who manage to escape the ageing process to an almost fetishistic degree. How does Charlize Theron do it? Demi Moore looks amazing! Gwyneth must have sold her soul or something! (Spoiler: they've either got good cosmetic surgeons, great cosmetic dermatologists, live like saints or a combination of the previous three.) 'Men tend to be fed pictures of younger women to look at by the media, and it's kind of seen as what men want. And women look at these ageless, or young, women and also aspire to that,' muses Remy.
On top of all this pressure, we're also the generation who've been through the early noughties, which makes us sort of terrified about the damage that has already been done. 'Being an easily-influenced teenager in the noughties meant I wanted to be a super-thin, super-tanned Zoebot,' Remy adds. 'I had no willpower to achieve goal number one, but goal number two was achievable with UV lights and blacked out goggles. Cue premature ageing.'
Alongside tanning, came being a size zero, was the fact that smoking (a great appetite suppressant, guys!) had still only just been banned indoors when we were teens – while 93 per cent of teens are non smokers these days, back then it was still pretty cool to spark up. So now girls like Sophie are madly trying to compensate for their bad behaviour. Alright, our bad behaviour. I did it too, OK?! 'I'm pretty worried about my face ageing because I have smoked and drunk a lot,' she says. 'My mum has always used expensive anti-ageing products, and she looks great, but she never smoked. I have to be even more careful.'
OK, so we've looked at why we're turning to preventive ageing products, but are they even bloody doing anything? Do they help with the free radicals that Dr Prager talks about? Is it worth spending upwards of a grand a year on creams claiming to help you maintain a smooth, youthful face? 'While the world is becoming an increasingly ageing place, when you're younger, cells regenerate. And changes in lifestyle can have a real effect – people wonder why Gwyneth Paltrow looks so good, and it's because she's made a point of salvaging as much as possible,' says Dr Prager. 'Lifestyle and sun protection is probably the most effective in stemming the ageing process.'
Dr Chris Flower, director general of the Cosmetic, Toiletry & Perfumery Association (CTPA) believes that certain products will have their benefits, but agrees that there are simpler (cheaper) ways to prevent looking ancient before our time. 'Anti-ageing products that increase cell regeneration are effective on older skin, but personally I'd be very worried if my daughter was using them,' he says. 'The biggest cause of problems is the sun. If we can reduce the exposure of our skin to the sun, then many of the problems of old age skin will be delayed.'
It seems, then, that there's just no substitute for a foundation with an SPF and UV/UVA filters. As Dr Prager puts it, if you're looking to look younger there's a simple solution. Sun protection ('not Factor 30 or 50, as they're mainly based on plastic and metals – so go for 25 or under), as well as antioxidants, over forking out hundreds of pounds for over-the-counter miracles.
And no, just using antioxidants in products won't save you either. 'Topical antioxidants can stimulate collagen in a healthy way, but it's a lot better to get antioxidants through nutrition,' he advises. 'Like I say, it's about combatting free radicals – a simple equation of the good stuff getting rid of the bad stuff.'
Thing is, we sort of knew this already, but that hasn't stopped us flocking to cosmetic dermatologists and scientific-looking tubs. Which is worrying. As Michelle puts it: 'I spend well over £100 on this pretty well known anti-ageing serum and, although it does make my skin gorgeously soft, how do I really know it's going to prevent my face from looking decidedly scrotum-like for the longest time possible?!'
We don't. So whilst we're all for hedging our bets with lotions and potions, maybe it's time we also went about spending our cash on the stuff we know works? Like fun. And holidays. And foundation containing an SPF of 25 or under.
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Photographs by Daisy Walker
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.