Susannah, 57, is letting nature take its course. Claudia, 60, uses Botox, fat jabs, cosmetic surgery and isn’t ruling out a face lift. They both think the other is utterly mad. So… who do YOU think is right?

Susannah Jowitt says… 

In every woman’s life, there comes a fork in the road when they look in the mirror and have a choice. Do they accept the hand dealt them by fate and genetics or tackle ‘the problem’ with intervention?

In other words, how far will they go for vanity? In many ways I am as vain as the next nearly-60-year-old. I squint closely at the lines on my face and slap on peptide serums when I remember.

I counteract my natural tendency to put on weight with exercise and sporadic bouts of curbing my enthusiasm for food and wine.

I sometimes think my boobs have tipped over from sex bomb into oversized bazooka territory and I’m not a big fan of the way my eyes have become hooded with age.

Sometimes, when caught off guard, my Resting Bitch Face looks more like Passed-Out Pensioner.

But this is ageing. I’m no longer 35 and I’m not trying to be. I’m not going to go gently – or invisibly – into that good night, nor am I going to let waves of judgment force me into fighting back the tides of time. 

So I draw the line at interventions I consider to be either unnatural or too medical to be justified in the name of that vanity. That means no Botox, no tweakments, no fat jabs and definitely no cosmetic surgery.

Why would anyone willingly go through the pain, pus-seepage and financial suffering of a boob job or an eyelift just to look exactly like an affluent, unhappy-looking, slightly blurred woman still trying to look 40?

All of which makes me the polar opposite of Claudia. Five years ago she and I met at a photoshoot and I remember thinking how alike we were: overweight but sassy about it, both of us suffering a little from that Fat Girl Syndrome of needing to be the funniest, jolliest person in the room.

She had me a little on the quick-fire wit and where she won hands down looks-wise was that she had great hair: Thick and lustrous next to my frizzy, peroxided mop.

So I have watched with amazement as she has halved her body weight with Mounjaro and is now the size 8 pin-up for the Femail fashion pages. Along the way, she has had a blepharoplasty to stop her eyelids drooping, taken Botox for years on and off and has seemed always to be on the hunt for the next miracle in face and body treatments.

Now she insists she has never felt or looked better.

Is there envy mixed in with my amazement? Yes, a little, because she’s wearing shorts, mini skirts, tightly cinched belts and many other things I have long since said goodbye to. 

But there’s also a worm of reluctant bitchiness that wonders why, like some of my friends, she seems to have chosen the fork that leads to looking like a little old lady: Chic, smiling, Chanel-thin old ladies, to be sure, but with a bird-like fragility that is at drastic odds with their previous incarnations.

Why is it so important to Claudia and these other women that they are thin and wrinkle-free? So important that they are prepared to age themselves unnaturally and suffer side-effects that wouldn’t be tolerated with, say, a headache pill or a skin cream?

A friend told me the other day that she loved her Mounjaro and didn’t even mind the days – whole days – that she lost to nausea.

Claudia herself told me that one of the best things about the GLP-1s was the way she had zero desire to drink wine anymore. And then wrote about how, because her appetite had been so successfully suppressed by Mounjaro, the resulting malnutrition manifested itself in hair loss, dandruff and dull sagging skin that then needed an expensive supplement to bring back to life. Her wonderful hair was no more.

Another woman I talked to said that she didn’t mind losing her hair on the jabs because she then had a hair transplant, so that was OK.

This is not OK, I want to shout, like the lone Cassandra in the room. I don’t want to live in a world where I might have to medicate myself against the side-effects of taking drugs to slim; where I have no desire to drink wine and eat good food and have joyful sex; where I lose my hair and my skin, all in the name of getting thin and staying ‘young’.

Partly because that just feels wrong – in an artificial, Brave New World sense – but mostly because I don’t believe that ultimately Claudia and these other women will be happier or healthier as a result. The honest truth is that I don’t believe Claudia’s transformation will bring her lasting contentment.

She says she pursues the body beautiful for herself but I fear she will always be battling to stay ahead of her hatred for her own body: That treacherous vessel that looks better right now but still tries to trip her up with drooping eyelids, wrinkly knees and forehead lines.

I would say that she is living in fear and that there will always be something else she has to do: A procedure, a nip, a tuck, a pill to take. I’ve been there. I’ve had those long dark teatimes of the soul where I’ve looked in the mirror and hated what I’ve seen.

My mother first put me on a diet when I was 11; I yo-yo dieted for the next 30 years all because society told me that I had to be thinner than I was.

I suspect Claudia has had much the same journey. I would like to go back to that moment, whenever it was, when she was told that she wasn’t good enough the way she was, and whisk her away with me through the foothills of self-hatred to the sunnier uplands of acceptance.

Because, whereas she’s reached 60 and is still fighting her body at every turn, I am the same age and have learned to accept mine as the flawed but beautiful machine it is.

I’m finally more interested in living well for the next 20 or 30 years than I am in satisfying society’s need for me to look a certain way. And by living well, I don’t mean yoga and chia seeds – I mean living wonderfully: With summer lunch parties, the odd mini Magnum and bottle of rosé, Sunday dinners of roasties and yorkshire pud.

I look forward to evenings spent clutching my stomach in laughter and feeling the spare tyre there without self-hatred; of mornings holding my face up to the sunshine during long walks taken for enjoyment; of nights zipping myself into party dresses that don’t hide my curves but still make me feel sexy.

So while I respect Claudia’s choices to needle, lift, freeze and hover over the weighing scales, as being the ones her fundamental lack of body self-confidence has urged her to take, I wish she didn’t feel the need to do it.

I also accept that she won’t see it that way. We have one thing in common, after all: We women of a certain age won’t be told what to do.

Claudia Connell says…

There’s a photo of me in my early teens with my grandmother. I’m wearing the Eighties fashion of the day while she is very much in ‘grandma’ uniform: Sensible shoes, thick tan tights, a home-knitted cardi with her grey hair tightly permed.

It was only recently that I realised the much-loved ‘old lady’ in that picture was actually 58 years old, two years younger than I am now.

My friends’ grandmothers all looked the same because that’s how it was for that generation – no fuss, no pretension and certainly no spending money on fripperies like grooming and skincare.

Today – thank goodness – things have changed. Celebrities around my age, women like Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry, Elizabeth Hurley and Jennifer Aniston, all look as fabulous today as they did 25 years ago. I’m part of a generation that might be approaching pensionable age but are damned if we’re going to look it.

We don’t just dye our hair and refuse the housecoats our grandmothers wore. Thanks to the advancement of cosmeceutical beauty, we also get nipped, tucked, filled and smoothed.

Well, not all of us. There are those who consider such vanity to be beneath them. They argue that they have better things to do with their time, more important things to spend their money on and look down their noses at the rest of us. I think about them in the same way I do those tedious types who like to brag about never watching television – you’re not better than me, you’re just missing out.

I might be 60 but if the choice is looking slim and youthful over porky and wrinkled then guess which route I’m going to take?

The puzzle for me is why some women – like Susannah – are so resistant. When the choice is looking your best versus looking a bit ropey compared to many of your peers, why would you go for the latter, especially if you can afford not to?

Take fat jabs for example. I’ve spent this summer as a size 8, the slimmest I have been since my early 20s and it’s all thanks to the modern miracle that is Mounjaro.

I took it for seven months, at a cost of around £1,000 in total. It’s a sum I can cancel out once I allow for all the money I’ve saved on groceries, takeaways and wine due to my drug-induced tiny appetite.

I don’t believe anyone who insists they are fat and happy. It’s a lie people tell to shut down conversation and abdicate responsibility for their health. I know this because I did it myself.

If Susannah is content to be plump then why is she for ever on a diet? When I look at her I see a very attractive woman with great boobs, fantastic hair and a bootylicious backside I’m rather jealous of (mine is as flat as a pancake these days). But I also find myself thinking: ‘Imagine how sensational she’d look if she dropped 20lbs.’

Susannah and I occasionally cross paths through work and chatted about the jabs once. I was in raptures about how life-changing they were and she told me in no uncertain terms that they weren’t for her. She likes food and enjoys a glass of wine. So do I – but I like being skinny much more.

I spent 20 years pigging out – what’s left in it for me to stuff my face at yet another all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, sink my third margarita of the evening and slope home full of self-loathing? Been there, done that – had the size 18 clothes to prove it.

I’m sure Susannah would argue that my new attitude makes me boring. I’d argue that I’ve been the ‘jolly’ plus size. I made the self-deprecating jokes about my belly rolls and double chin. I liked to get in early and make gags about the things I knew everyone was thinking.

It might not be right but today I’m treated with much more respect and courtesy as a slim person than I ever was as a fatty.

Although I no longer take Mounjaro (I wouldn’t hesitate to return to it if I needed to), my grooming and anti-ageing maintenance bill is still hefty. My naturally curly hair would be a ball of frizz if I didn’t pay for £200 Brazilian straightening treatments every 12 weeks. Haircuts and colour every ten weeks add another £300 to the bill.

I know a couple of women who are very proud of the fact they dye their hair at home with a box colour. Good for them. There’s only one problem though – it looks awful. I’d rather pay the professionals.

I first had Botox when I was in my late 30s. The wrinkles on my forehead and around my eyes were becoming pronounced and several of my friends were already devotees of the muscle-relaxing injections. I was nervous but bit the bullet and became an instant convert. For 15 years I didn’t look back, having injections every four months at £250 a pop.

Once I got into my mid-50s, I stopped as Botox was starting to make my hooded eyes look more pronounced.

I was also the heaviest I’d ever been and had lost interest in trying to improve my appearance through tweakments. To mangle a certain advertising slogan: I didn’t think I was worth it.

Last year, after shedding 4st, I had upper eye blepharoplasty (the most popular cosmetic procedure for older women) at a cost of £3,600. Removing loose skin from around my eyes left me looking brighter, refreshed and no longer tired and miserable. It also means I can return to Botox and a smooth brow, and have just booked in to have my first injections in five years.

There will be people who question why I feel the need. Why not just accept ageing and wrinkles? Because I don’t want to. Because there’s an affordable, accessible guaranteed-to-work fix so why not take it?

I’ve also had expensive beauty treatments over the years from the painful (Fraxel laser treatment for saggy jowls) to the exhilarating (cryotherapy) and the ridiculous (bird poo facials and seaweed body wraps).

I don’t like fillers – I’ve seen too many lumpy pillow faces – but I will try anything.

After I had my blepharoplasty, I said that was me done and I wouldn’t consider any further surgeries. But then one of my friends had a facelift and looks incredible. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t Googled a few surgeons for future reference.

That’s a way off though. So, meantime, I’ll keep popping the supplements (around £50 a month), slapping on the anti-ageing moisturisers, eye creams and serums (another £50 a month) and dipping into the Botox.

Yes, it can be an expensive business but investing in yourself has guaranteed returns. When you look your best, you’re happier, you have more confidence and people treat you differently.

I doubt Susannah and I will ever see eye to eye on this issue. She thinks I’m mad to take medication to lose weight and spend money fighting something as inevitable as ageing. I think she’s mad to not even try.