Suddenly we're ageing

When the internet taught me about nasiolabial folds

I first started noticing signs of ageing on my face in Zoom calls during the pandemic. It’s funny that we even call it that. Ageing.

Up until probably your mid-twenties you’re just growing - or maybe maturing once you’re past 18 - but then you’re ageing. It carries connotations of degeneration. For a brief moment you’re headed up and then from there it’s down.

To think that anything should peak in our first couple of decades is bizarre, considering we’re generally likely to live most of our lives in the years after that.

At 34, I found myself in Zoom meetings and workshops, fixating on the lines on the sides of my mouth. When did they happen?

The internet told me they were called nasolabial folds and that they were mostly caused by the face changing shape over time.