The video making women cheer, laugh and share.

by EDEN RILEY

I cannot believe how common plastic surgery has become.

I see such young women getting their noses, lips, breasts done. I want to sit down with them as they wait in the waiting rooms, tell them that as soon as they start messing with their face, they’ll bypass their twenties because they instantly look thirty-five.

Instead, I have made this video. Take a look:

There’s such a fear around looking our age…

I watched an old, white-haired woman crossing the road yesterday and thought of the secrets and wisdom she would have. Yet she’s mainly invisible, in the world.

I want middle-aged women to stop feeling like they are getting ugly, and I want young women to stop feeling like they need to get surgery to keep up.

And I want all of us to start respecting our elders more. Not sure if all that’s going to happen but at least I can make a few people think a bit!

Plastic surgery is dangerous because it’s a slippery slope. The normalisation of it all is abhorrent. This is not normal.

Women should not have to feel the need to get major operations requiring painful recovery, all in the name of “beauty.”

As for labiaplasty … genital mutilation is alive and well, being performed in surgeries all across Australia.

I made this video because we all need to laugh more … especially at the things that are utterly ridiculous to begin with. I am going to be ageing disgracefully, and I get the feeling a lot of my female comrades will be right there alongside me.

We need to claim our bodies back. They’re ours. And they’re amazing.

(And no, I didn’t actually eat the chicken.)

Eden Riley has been blogging for five and a half years. Her blog, Edenland was named Best Australian Blog 2012 this year. She is a trained copywriter in the 90’s and now writes freelance pieces and blogs from her home in the Blue Mountains.

You can follow her on Twitter @EdenLand

Do you feel pressure to look younger? Conform to some ideal of what beautiful is?