Enough with the lips. I can’t take it anymore.

Look, I understand a little nip and tuck here and there. Why not tighten that jawline when the rest of your body has been kept fit and trim? And if your hooded eyelids are beginning to look like a built in sun-visor,  then what’s wrong with a little lift?

But these lips- these collagen stuffed, halloween-inspired, cartoon wax lips!

It’s not news that Hollywood  has always lived a bit in its own, self-induced ‘bubble,” and I think this is why we are seeing more and more actresses believing that having a filler-injected face and mouth is the new normal. There is no need to call them out by name; we have all seen them and sadly, these enormous lips never seem to result in more work. Neither do the women look younger. They still appear to be middle aged, only now as if they’ve stuck their head inside a wasp’s nest.

It seems wholly an American thing and really, that’s because Hollywood doesn’t take kindly to women over 40 when casting films. The Meg Ryans and Julia Roberts, who seemed to be in every film made throughout their 20s and 30s, suddenly became conspicuously absent once they hit 40 and one of them made a career-ending mistake by thinking acquiring Flipper lips would revive industry interest. But taking a look at Downton Abbey, the enormously successful British television drama, we see a collection of familiar, wonderfully talented, veteran actresses, led by the formidable Maggie Smith, with nary a bloated mouth amongst them. It’s why we love them. They look believable as fitting to the period in which the series is set. 78 year old Dame Judi Dench reigns supreme at the top of any list of respected thespians and you wouldn’t catch her dead connecting a bicycle pump to her upper lip. Neither has she rid her face of its exquisite crow’s feet or botoxed away her sparkling expressions. And, to be fair, although I had to really think hard to come up with a couple from this side of the pond, neither has the marvelous Meryl Streep or Sally Field.