Happy birthday to me. And here's to being content with the face I deserve

He made this reflection two months before the publication of his final novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the immediate success and critical acclaim of which he sadly wouldn’t have much time to appreciate.

As with many of Orwell’s most memorable quotations, his sweeping generalisation is only partly true. More accurately, perhaps – particularly 80 years later – is that at 50, everyone has the face they can afford.

It’s my 44th birthday today, marking what some would call ‘middle-age’ but which is (even barring some tragic accident) very likely past that. Amongst many vices, I share Orwell’s unfortunate habit of smoking roll-up cigarettes, starting as a teenager in the fag-end days of the 1990s when doing such things as inhaling toxic fumes into one’s lungs and vehemently exhaling them just about still counted as ‘cool.’ (It isn’t kids, never try it.)

At 44, I definitely have the face I deserve, as I imagine I will at 50. If I focused more on healthy self-preservation activities like jogging, eating more greens, and gave up expensive stupidities like tobacco, however, I could probably gain – or, due to modern advances in beauty treatments, acquire - a more youthful one.

I’ve several friends and acquaintances – both younger and older – who have had little bits of ‘work’ done, as the saying goes. None of that ‘work’ has gone wrong – for them, at least - and the ‘help’ such procedures result in can be subtle but effective.

Injections of Botox are now viewed as minor treatments, perfectly normalised, relatively inexpensive, no longer the preserve of the super-rich, or celebrities. But, given the gendered expectation of eternal youth women face, where ageing is often seen to be – or internalised – as a sign of moral failure, women will be damned if they do, and damned if they don’t go along with such things.

That doesn’t change, no matter what age you are. That’s partly why, when it comes to things like Botox, fillers, or the definitely unaffordable lifts and trims and what-not, I so far find myself completely work-shy.

I can’t lie, though: taking in the bare-faced truth of the morning reflection, I’ve at times a smidge of nostalgia. But not because of missing the sharp jawline of my youth - though I do.

It’s not wishing to pander to the male-gaze (in my decades of experience, I know that’s never satisfied), or wishing myself wrinkle-free again that’s behind my occasional sadness.

It’s the stark reality that, on the seesaw of life, I’m definitively on the other side of an inevitable downward trajectory. Not towards ugliness - for goodness sake, that’s entirely subjective - but towards, well, a state of non-existence. Existential gulp.

I can’t pretend that doesn’t sometimes feels frightening. Is this a mid-life crisis? Quite probably. Does it suggest it’s probably time for an overdue mid-life decision to make some changes, too? Reluctantly – for I do like indulging in things (cheese, wine, the baccy) that are bad for me – yes.

Orwell wrote his infamous line about having the face one deserves at least somewhat aware he’d been cheating death for some time. For much of the previous three years, he’d been holed up in the remote Barnhill on the Isle of Jura, already in a dreadful state of ill-health, doggedly completing what must be fairly assessed as amongst the most definitive novels of the twentieth century.

He didn’t know that, of course, though the recent success of Animal Farm had turned his literary fortunes around after a comparatively lacklustre reception for his previous four novels.

One of my favourite of which, incidentally, is Coming Up For Air. In it, narrator George Bowling, a 45-year-old lower middle-class man, is troubled by his weight, unhappy with his middle-of-the-road lot, self-conscious about his appearance, due to his need of false teeth, and being distinctly overweight. These days, he’d be considering Ozempic.

Published in 1939, on the brink of war, Bowling (Orwell, really) rails against sleek, “streamlined” modernity, where keeping up with appearances, trying to live an ordinary life, is underlaid by the ever-present threat of war.

A sense of living in limbo, suspended between two worlds, runs throughout the novel. An unplanned visit to his childhood village – completely changed by modernity, including a beloved childhood pond becoming a rubbish tip – sums up Bowling’s feeling of dread; his surety of impending disaster. Prior feelings of certainty that the world he’d grown old in, with certain customs, traditions, values, would survive his own demise feel dashed.

I see these sentiments expressed constantly today. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to feeling them too. Every new wrinkle feels justified given the political instability caused by the upending of democratic norms globally, and what sometimes feels a determination from the rising forces of both the far left and far right, to destroy social cohesion. It’s difficult, while in the thick of it, to say with certainty where we’re headed.

A frequent sense of impending disaster makes lamenting my lost jawline seem a little trivial. In the face of it, though, what can we do? Well, I could at the very least renew my gym membership, eat more broccoli, save the £27 it costs for 30g of tobacco, and purchase a collagen-boosting face-serum or something.

Did I just commit to becoming healthier, and giving up the dreadful baccy in a national newspaper, read by close friends who will hold me to account? I guess I did. Happy birthday to me. As Orwellian warnings go, having the face one deserves aged 50 is one I’ll be content with.