botoxic

Just a girl with a moving forehead, trying to figure it all out.

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I recently got engaged. I was very surprised by the proposal (as surprised as one can be in a nine-year relationship) and spent most of the evening afterwards crying, laughing hysterically, and asking Derek to remind me what he’d actually said, since the shock wiped it from my memory. My mind was a pinball machine of emotion, but one thought that muscled its way to the front was: “I’m going to have to get Botox for the wedding.”

I know! Pathetic. But it’s probably not too shocking that this thought would enter my brain, growing up as I did — as we all have — hearing that your wedding day is supposed to be the best day of your life. And brides are required to look radiantly beautiful, the best they ever have. There’s a whole industry built on this idea. Have you seen Glossier founder Emily Weiss’s militaristic "wedding black book" of colonics, facials, and cleanses, which resulted in her feeling “eight out of ten good” about herself on the day? Just EIGHT OUT OF TEN, EMILY?! 

It’s not like I wasn’t considering Botox anyway. I turned 30 last year, which as we all know is the age after which women start being patronised for simply existing. Just look at the breathless tone of this tweet marvelling at how Anne Hathaway can look so good despite being thirty-nine. Sure that’s almost 40! Time for the urn, Anne!

E! News @enews

Did Anne Hathaway make a deal with the devil? She is literally aging backward. (📷: Getty Images)

In the months before my birthday, I obsessed over the lines on my forehead. Those lines have probably been there since I was about 25, but being 30 with those same lines on my forehead? That was different, somehow. I can ‘sort it out,’ so why don’t I? It’s my choice, right? I am a woman making a decision for myself and, therefore, that decision is totally impervious to criticism! It’s right there in the rules of feminism.

So why didn’t I do it, if it was so easy and totally fine? Why haven’t I already booked an appointment to ensure I am smooth and unlined on my wedding day? Well, it’s because if I’m being very honest with myself, I know that this choice does not exist in a vacuum. It’s not as simple as “I’m doing this for me” because let’s face it, I would not be doing it for me. I would be doing it because I have been told, both overtly and covertly, that to be a woman and show signs of ageing is unacceptable. 

This message has been marinating in my brain for years, to the extent that I am surprised and distracted when women in films and on TV are actually able to frown and raise their eyebrows. I read about the merits of ‘preventative’ Botox (a neat trick to reel younger women in early) and discover with horror that it’s already too late — I should have been injecting since 23 to be able to slide through the phases of life undetected. Every day I see pictures of celebrities who are “unrecognisable” (read: old!!!) and others who are “aging backwards.” It is inescapable. This ‘choice’ we have — is it a choice at all if it has been crystal clear your whole life that there is a right way and a wrong way to age? 

Women have, to put it rather dramatically, had our oppression sold back to us as freedom. It’s far too convenient that the ‘choice’ to get Botox (or fillers, or plastic surgery) just so happens to line up with the patriarchal beauty standard. These procedures that have been positioned as ‘empowering’ are just coincidentally very expensive and make certain people a lot of money. It’s total happenstance that this has been completely normalised over the last two decades, so now it’s not even a question of why you would, but why you wouldn’t.

In a way, I am a hypocrite, since I apply retinol and eye cream and moisturiser — all products that purport to slow the signs of ageing. Surely if I didn’t want to participate in the beauty standard, I’d throw my various potions in the bin? But let’s allow a little nuance. I like to take care of my skin! And those rituals are comforting to me (and a hell of a lot cheaper than thrice-yearly injections). The idea of getting Botox doesn’t feel comforting, at least not at the moment. It feels like fear — a fear that isn’t even my own. The lines on my forehead will deepen and more will come and maybe I’ll iron them out and maybe I won’t. Right now I am leaning towards the latter. If I look 30 years old… that’s fine, because I am. I look forward to looking 40 years old, and 60 years old, and 80 years old. That is life, after all.

I’m sorry if this makes anyone feel bad. I’m not trying to put myself on the moral high ground here — I’m just figuring out how I feel. Maybe Botox does bring you joy and you resent me for implying that you’re a double agent of the patriarchy or whatever it was that Jameela Jamil called the Kardashians (I don’t think that, BTW). Maybe you’re disgusted at me for worrying about lines on my forehead in the first place when there’s so much going on in the world (in which case I must inform you… you are reading a beauty newsletter). We’re all products of the same incredibly poisonous culture and I will not blame or shame anyone for doing what makes them happy. And you absolutely never know, tomorrow I could declare that I am flying to Turkey for a BBL. It’s really that much of a knife’s edge, folks. I’ll talk to you in five years when I inevitably experience this crisis all over again.

Thanks for reading Vanity Project! This is a bit of a different one, but… hope you can see where I’m coming from. See you soon for the next instalment!