She may still have the glossy mane, tiny waist and toned arms of a woman ten years her junior, but there was one body part that let down Catherine Zeta-Jones when she appeared on the red carpet this week — her saggy knees.
The 42-year-old’s knee wrinkles — or ‘kninkles’ as they have been dubbed — blighted her otherwise perfect pins, and proved that even Hollywood stars can’t avoid the dreaded crinkling, pouching and sagging of the knee area which starts when women hit 40.
‘As we age, the collagen beneath the skin’s surface breaks down, which causes sagging — and the force of gravity above the knees, plus the extra skin that allows us to stretch and bend our legs, makes this area more noticeable than most,’ says Dr Dirk Kremer, cosmetic surgeon at Harley Street Aesthetics.
‘High impact exercise targeting your thigh muscles does have an effect, because as you tone the muscle, the skin tightens with it,’ she says. ‘And simply body brushing and using lashings of moisturiser will help the skin’s appearance if you want to bare your legs. But it won’t work miracles.’
Dr Mountford also performs Thermage, a radiofrequency treatment that tightens the skin which claims to give a ‘decent improvement’ to minor knee wrinkles.
But the only real fix is to fork out for an £8,000 surgical thigh lift, where the entire skin of the thigh is pulled up — though it leaves a major knee-to-groin scar down the inner thigh.
It seems that most celebrities prefer to just grin — and bare — their problem knees, be they wrinkly, chubby, bulbous, knobbly or misshapen . . .
