Boston women ‘age quickly’ due to stress, environment
Boston-area women let out a collective “humph” when Ted, the vulgar yet loveable star of Seth MacFarlane’s locally filmed movie, referred to them as “on the whole, a paler, uglier sort than women from the else where’s of life.”
Ouch, Ted. Ouch.
But the offensive teddy bear raises a good question – do Boston women prioritize looking good?
Tremendous temperature shifts and stressful routines may be causing Boston women to “age faster,” according to a local plastic surgeon and Boston University professor.
“Women in Boston have got all the risks,” said Dr. Jeffrey Spiegel, a Board Certified Facial Plastic Surgeon. “We’re in a pretty harsh environment. The sun is strong in the summer and the winters are bitterly cold.”
According to Spiegel, New England women often neglect wearing sun screen year round, a big skin no-no.
“The sun is out there all the time. People forget that the snow is a beautiful reflector of sunlight. Sun screen isn’t just meant for the Cape,” he said.
Stress is another major reason why Boston women may not look as fresh-faced as women in other parts of the country.
“The women here are go getters, strivers, innovators. This is a city where everyone is talking about their startup, about moving ahead. All those things eventually show in your face,” he said.
While Boston isn’t exactly notorious for busty, nipped and tucked women, Spiegel said that more and more women here are getting comfortable with the idea of plastic surgery.
“There is less of a negative perception about things like Botox and fillers… There are new types of treatments that help you build your own collagen and actually prevent lines and wrinkles,” he said, adding that women here should start getting cosmetic dermatology treatments as early as their twenties.
“The better you look, the more highly people are going to consider you when they see you. There is a link between looking good, feeling good and being seen as a high achiever,” he said.
Boston blogger and twenty-something who goes by Hell On Heels Girl said that while she has nothing against putting effort into her appearance, she’d rather not spend her money on injections.
“I’m all about skin care. No matter how tired you may be, get up, wash the day off your face and put some lotion on before you go to bed. As a twenty something myself, it’s the little things like that which count now,” she said.
“No need to spend money on unnecessary and totally preventable things like plastic surgery when I could be spending them on a fabulous European vacation, new house or Jimmy Choos.”
Travel and Leisure ranks Boston as #25 on a list of the 35 most attractive U.S. cities. But that’s not all on the women – it includes men as well.
The city with the most attractive women, according to Askmen.com, is Rio De Janeiro, where the beaches are “swarming with beautiful, busty women in dental floss bikinis.”
Follow Morgan Rousseau on Twitter: @MetroMorgan
Follow Metro Boston on Twitter: @MetroBOS
I’m confused. On one hand you are saying that women need to look good in order to be high achievers, and then on the other hand, you are saying that women with highly successful jobs such as CEOs and Lawyers are old and ugly due to the stress of these jobs. Shouldn’t their premature aging have prevented them from climbing so high up as CEO? I’m going to call your bluff on this article. I highly doubt you have any evidence at all that women in Boston age faster. In fact, my guess is that it is the opposite. Boston has a lower than the national average rate of obesity, which undoubtedly ages bodies faster than climate. These highly educated women are much less likely to be smokers, another major aging factor. There are cities with much greater swings in temperature than Boston, take Minneapolis for instance, and unless these Boston women spend considerable time out in the elements, I going to guess that the effect of climate is negligible. As for not wearing sunscreen during the whole year, I highly doubt these women with highly successful jobs are even outside at all during sunlight hours in a city that gets dark during the winter as early as 4:30PM. My guess is that the real reason for the perception that women are less attractive in Boston is that the women here are more successful and independent. This is not a new phenomenon, you could have saved yourself some time printing that article and just dug up some old print from the early 1900’s in which women feminists were depicted as ugly old hags.