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There’s a certain type of woman who walks into my Harley Street consultation room. She is impeccably dressed — not flamboyantly, but with the kind of precision that comes from years of knowing what works and what doesn’t. A silk blouse that whispers authority, a heel high enough to command attention but not so high that it betrays effort. She sits across from me with the posture of someone who has presented in boardrooms, negotiated contracts, perhaps even steered a company through turbulence.
Her CV could silence a room. She is brilliant, experienced, battle-tested. And yet, when she speaks, it is rarely about performance or productivity. It is about perception.
“I know I’m more qualified,” one woman confided, “but when I walk into the meeting beside her — the younger colleague — I can see the decision already made.”
It is a sentence I have heard, in some form, countless times.
For one, a suggestion of vitality; for the other, a perceived expiry date.
We live in an age where women are encouraged — loudly — to “age gracefully.” Advertisements tell us that every wrinkle is a story, every crease a sign of wisdom. And yet, the workplace plays by different rules. The same crow’s feet that give George Clooney gravitas are read as fatigue on a female CFO.
This double standard isn’t new. Simone de Beauvoir once observed that society sees ageing women as “a horror of horrors.” And in today’s boardrooms, that horror is quietly dressed up as “freshness,” “energy,” or “team culture.” Words that, when decoded, mean youth.
In consultations, my patients don’t ask to look twenty again. They ask to look as sharp as they feel. To ensure that their faces reflect their vitality, not betray it. A small lift, a refined jawline, a touch of light around the eyes — not reinvention, but recalibration.
Every culture has its myths. For women in power, one of the most persistent is that the glass ceiling is the ultimate barrier. But the women who sit across from me tell a different story.
For them, the ceiling is no longer just glass. It is mirrored. And it reflects back not their brilliance, not their accomplishments, but the biases society insists on attaching to their reflection.
Think of it: a woman presents a quarterly report with precision and strategy. Yet when she sees her reflection in the polished glass of the boardroom table, she notices not the sharpness of her argument but the softness of her jawline. A colleague sees it too, though perhaps unconsciously. And suddenly, her competence is reframed — not as wisdom, but as “tiredness.”
This is not vanity. It is the unspoken theatre of modern corporate life.
Popular culture, of course, both reflects and reinforces this. When Sex and the City returned with its reboot, And Just Like That, critics sharpened their knives. “Too much Botox,” some scoffed. “Not enough Botox,” others countered. As if the only permissible narrative for women over forty was to either freeze time completely or surrender to it entirely.
And yet, one cannot help but notice: the men of the show aged into gravitas, while the women were dissected under the microscope of “relatability.”
It is a cultural script that my patients live daily — only theirs is played out not on television screens but in job interviews, client meetings, and promotion panels.
This is where I enter the narrative. As a plastic surgeon, I am not writing the script, but I do adjust the lighting. My role is not to erase years but to ensure that those years are read correctly.
To make sure that “smile lines” remain exactly that — markers of warmth and energy — instead of being misread as “deadlines.”
I often tell my patients: You don’t need to look younger. You need to look like the best version of yourself right now. For some, that means a subtle deep plane facelift that restores harmony to the midface and jawline. For others, it’s a refinement around the eyes, softening shadows that speak louder than they should.
These are not indulgences. They are strategies — professional as much as personal.
The truth is, women in positions of power do not simply face a glass ceiling. They face a mirror ceiling
— one that reflects society’s prejudices about ageing back onto them. It is a ceiling that demands not just competence, but eternal youth as proof of continued relevance.
And so, week after week, I meet women who refuse to be written out of the story. They know their worth. They know their talent. They simply want the world to see them as they see themselves — vibrant, capable, and very much in their prime.
Until then, we adjust. We refine. And we continue to lead — not despite the lines on our faces, but with the quiet confidence of knowing that those lines no longer dictate the narrative.
© 2025 · Beauty and the City by Dr. Dirk J. Kremer
Published: September 2025 · Harley Street, London
All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish this article without permission.
