My hairdresser is an extraordinary girl.

Up until 3 years ago I didn’t have a regular hairdresser. I never found one I particularly liked or that particularly interested me. And so I flitted from salon to salon. It wasn’t so much that they were unable to do anything with my thin, flyaway hair but rather that I never met one with whom I felt any great affinity or connection. That was until I met Anna.

Anna worked in a salon in my local town and was a chatty, interesting girl. I don’t really like hairdresser small talk but she had lots of life experiences and was generous with her information. But the thing I liked most about her was her view that her customers were kings. She felt that they paid handsomely to get their tresses tended and therefore shouldn’t just be shunted in and out the door but rather pampered and made feel special during that hour or so of “me” time. Most, she explained to me one day, would have dashed into the hairdresser between school runs or taken an hour off work or had to get their mother around to look after the kids. That hour or so in the hair salon was precious time and Anna believed that it was her duty to make her customer feel like they were the only person in the world for that hour. So she would offer tea or coffee or even to run out and get a sandwich while the highlights were taking hold, she’d give you a complimentary hand massage, she’d offer you advice about detangling combs for your kids and write the name of a website on a scrap of paper for you, she’d tell you about her dyslexia, her ambitions to own her own salon, how she was working all the hours she could to make the money to do so and how she believed that if you wanted something badly enough, you’d get it. She was 25 when I started going to her. By the time she was 27 she had bought her own salon.

I have to say I admired her youthful tenacity and determination. Not only that but Anna is a girl with a big heart. Recently she told me about one of her customers who had developed cancer and was in hospital feeling very low. Anna went to see her each week and blowdried her hair to cheer her up.

Two weeks ago I brought my middle daughter along to her to get her hair done for a family event. I was flicking through one of the magazines in the salon as I waited and commented on a celebrity who had been a mess but who has changed agent and undergone a complete transformation and now looks a million dollars. Anna suddenly announced that she was going for her first session of botox in a week!

I was stunned. She’s 28. To my complete surprise she informed me that she has spent thousands on consultations with the top cosmetic surgeons in the US over the last number of years and was advised that she should start having botox once a year from now on because that way she would get used to not using the muscles that cause wrinkles and wouldn’t need so much botox in years to come. She also mentioned a boob reduction within a few years and a tummy tuck among other things. I was flabbergasted. Suddenly this very sensible and dynamic girl evaporated before my eyes and became instead a needy, insecure person, paranoid about her body and looks. I tried in vain to tell her that I felt botox in her case was completely unnecessary. But she was very pragmatic and assured about it all. I felt hugely under-qualified to even try and argue the point.

The fact is I completely disagree with cosmetic surgery except in cases of injuries like burns or facial disfigurements. I don’t think there is anything less attractive than a frozen face, trout pout or skin stretched across cheekbones so tight that a smile resembles that of the joker in Batman rather than a comely maiden. It’s horrible, absolutely horrible.

Last night I dragged my husband along to see Sex and the City 2. I’m a fan of the series. Apart from Carrie’s irritating typing and “I couldn’t help but wonder…..”, I found the series wonderfully refreshing – honest, sexy and liberating. I don’t blame anyone for bringing it to the big screen and trying to cash in on its worldwide appeal for a little longer. I don’t blame the producers for taking the millions from Dior et al to shamelessly promote their brands. I had to grudgingly tip my hat to them as Miranda swept bottles of Lancome cleanser and Dior Fahrenheit perfume into her washbag last night. No such thing as subliminal advertising here. This was straight in your face. Women the world over will have recognised the little flower symbol on the white Lancome bottle and the distinctive shape and red fading into yellow of the Fahrenheit bottle and I’ve no doubt their sales will rocket in weeks to come. Fair play to them. We’re the mugs.

But here’s one mug that won’t be taken in because I certainly wouldn’t want to look like I’d just spent a year in formaldehyde which is exactly what I thought when the four (now mature) ladies faces appeared on screen in the opening shot. Could Carrie’s cheekbones have been any higher or her eyes stretched any tighter? And as for Samantha, great body but shame about the face that now looks like it’s full of more botulism that a can of infected tuna. It’s not a good look.

Of course I’d like to still have skin like a baby’s bum, though thanks to my mum’s great genes it’s not bad for my age. But here’s the thing – one of my nicest memories is of an old man stopping me on a busy city street as I walked home from university one day many years ago and telling me that I had the nicest smile he’d ever seen and that it made him feel good. I hadn’t even realised that I was smiling as I walked along in my own little world. If I made his day, he certainly made mine. And I’d like to think that in years to come, people will be able to see that I smiled a lot because of the laughter lines around my eyes. Would I pay thousands to eliminate them? Would I throw away a diary that I’d spent a lifetime writing? The hell I would.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm1WUm-drSw