Stop fighting your face
Why does admitting that you’re over 25 and haven’t used Botox feel like being a virgin in college, or enjoying Mariah Carey’s music (her later stuff)? It’s a personal choice, but one that makes you feel super uncool when you’re found out.
Most women have never exactly embraced aging, of course, but the fight seems to be coming faster and more furiously. I always figured that, unless you’re a screen actress, you had until at least 45 or 50 to really start fretting about crows’ feet and jowls.
So wrong. At the almost-dead age of 39, I am literally the only woman in my circle who hasn’t started having botulinum injected into her face to combat problems that don’t yet exist. And to be clear, my friend circle is composed of neither actresses nor models, just regular people whose professions do not contractually obligate them to look any certain way.
I was at a party where the hostess, surrounded by a circle of well-maintained women, directed the following scornful statement my way: “She doesn’t even have a dermatologist!” She meant it as a compliment, but it felt like being outed for some sort of hygiene fail.
I can’t even flip through a nothing-like-Vogue magazine of slow cooker recipes without being bombarded by advertisements for anti-aging technologies. It’s everywhere.
My dermatologist friend (whom I’ve never seen clinically, mind you), makes the following argument: “If you start now, you won’t need to get major work done later.” Like doing preventative maintenance on your car. She claims that she can always tell those 50-something women from the fools who placed their chips on sunscreen and gravity.
I think that was supposed to strike fear in my heart, or at least furrow my brow (something I can still do). I related that conversation to my mother, who at 70 has porcelain skin that women 20 years her junior would kill for, and she flipped. “Don’t you dare do anything to your face! If you start that stuff now, you will never be able to stop. And God knows what you’ll look like at 60.”
That’s the thing: when does it stop? From Botox, to keep things from moving that might one day cause wrinkles; to fillers, which add youthful plumpness in your cheeks (I hear ice cream and beer work well for this too); to full-blown surgeries that can make you look like the bride of a taxidermist — there’s no easy off-ramp from this stuff.
And why is aging such a crime, anyway? If you’ve got laugh lines, you’ve laughed. If you’ve got forehead wrinkles, you’ve been surprised or worried. Lines between your brows? You’ve made the wretched mistake of thinking hard about something, or perhaps gotten angry. The chutzpah!
It’s like entering into a conflict in the Middle East. This is not a war you are going to win. Nine out of ten dentists agree that you will get older. Do you really want to do it looking like a Madame Tussaud creation in your teenage daughter’s white jeans?
Here’s a radical thought: imagine if we redirected the energy and money we spend agonizing over our visages into other channels that make us feel good about ourselves. I’d like to be able to get out of a chair without assistance when I’m older, so I do yoga. And I do it with a bunch of older ladies whose bodies AND faces move in a graceful, gorgeous, natural way. Seeing them makes me excited to embrace my future face, not fight it.
Should every woman age in the way that makes her feel her best? Of course. For some people, that will involve cosmetic solutions. Rock the Botox if it makes you feel good. But choosing not to shouldn’t be my dirty little secret (like, ahem, Mariah). I should be able to wear it right across my [beautifully wrinkled] face.
