Parralox

What’s happened to your face? Darling, she’s just had a bit of botox. Oh, it’s not botox. You look like a zombie. She still has emotions!

Where do we stand on injecting botulism into your face? Personally I wouldn’t ever do it but I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who would. The endless pursuit of youth. You’re never going to win, are you? Embrace your lines, I say.

Whether you would or you wouldn’t, this product – and the name of the first epsiode of the fourth series of Ab Fab – *isn’t* botox. That is made clear. Though I thought ‘botox’ was just a generic, catch-all name for numerous different products that paralyse the muscles in your face. So maybe this is a product containing an entirely different, potentially fatal, bacteria.

Regardless, the show is bookended by Patsy having undergone a treatment at the beginning and Edina one at the end. The latter incident of which Saffron mistakes as being put on in order to scupper her chances of getting a job that would result in her leaving the home. It isn’t – she’s is genuinely frothing at the mouth and unable to speak – but Saffy berates her and therefore ruins the opportunity.

The design here is loosely based on one of the big hitters in the industry. I say ‘industry’. I don’t really know how it works. Because of the invasive nature of this type of thing they give any commerically available products non-intrusive and unthreatening names, so it’s hard to scope them out. The swirly thing is kind of lifted from the same source as the text but I tried to get Patsy’s hair and a sort of cigarette smoke-esque shape. It’s arbitrary, but then that suits the genre.

As a side note, I once did some work for a company that specialised with dermatological fillers (I’m a designer for my ‘normal’ job, if that wasn’t already evident). Parts of the project involved creating some video ads and I got supplied a three hour long seminar video to pick highlight from and it was honestly horrifying to watch. Women getting needles stuck into their faces all over the place. It looked like some of the outtakes from Hellraiser. But far less fun and vastly more expensive.

I say it again, people – embrace your lines.