Mirror Mirror

Adventures in Botox

As a culture we are fixated on youth. There is an obvious preference for it that is manifest in every aspect of life. Our female beauty standards (smooth skin, lithe childlike bodies, hairless genitals, submissiveness) are almost entirely defined by it. As women, we are taught to fear aging. God forbid you get old – with women as young as 30 being classified as ‘over the hill’, ‘used up’, ‘past their prime’ (as if any person in there 20’s could conceivable have even begun to reach their prime).

All of this is made worse still by social media. There is a sense of constantly being seen, an expectation that we exist as things to behold. Objects of aesthetic significance. Technology now allows people to smooth their faces, hide their less desirable eccentricities. This creates a distorted expectation of ourselves. So much so that it seems everyone is desperately trying to emulate the not real faces and bodies that flood their social media feeds.

I was lucky enough to go through puberty before the pervasive presence of the Internet defined our daily existence and to find female idols that were less concerned with a perfect appearance. I was deeply into punk, avante garde art, and feminist literature – showing me a different kind of woman (one that played with aesthetics for joy or art or anything other than serving the male gaze). These where hairy, pierced, tattooed, weird women that assigned value to their minds, not just their bodies. But still this inoculation did not make me completely immune.

As I stride happily into my 30’s I feel the fear - that I am getting old. I mean, the way it’s portrayed there is no greater tragedy for a woman than to get old. And so, you must do everything in your power to stop the unrelenting hands of time – or at least the mark they leave on you face and thighs.

In my twenties I never had a skin care regime – I regularly slept in my heavy makeup and scraped off the remains with makeup wipes. I didn’t wear sunscreen, I didn’t worry about staying hydrated, and I never worried about my face. I blithely disregarded the effects of my constant frowning, reveling in its youthful elasticity.

And then, well and then I turned 30. I realized my much younger friends (women barely at the start of their twenties) had strict skin care routines, had multiple regular beauty treatments, and were doing more to care for their skin than I had ever conceived of. And if I’m honest, I began to panic.

I never imagined myself to be an overly vain person – but it turns out I absolutely am. I care about how I look. Now, I have always cared – you don’t get tattoos, piercings, dye your hair candy floss pink or vibrant orange and wear a metric tonne of eyeliner every day if you don’t care about how you look. But that care was about fun. It was a way to explore and express my ever-emerging personhood.

Then I had a kind of crisis of sorts. I started worrying about the lines on my forehead, the uneven texture of my skin. More than ever, I wanted to be pretty – I wanted to be perceived as pretty. I grew my hair long (sticking to natural shades), took out all my piercings, got a 5-step skin care routine, a water bottle to obsessively stay hydrated, and eventually – botox.

It wasn’t like I sort it out for purely aesthetic reasons (I say as I try to deflect my own shame). As someone with C-PTSD and being generally high strung there is no surprise that I am a teeth grinder. As a result I have TMJ. This is basically a disorder of the jaw muscle that causes pain and damage to the teeth and jaw joint. A few years back it got so bad that I could barely open my mouth; my jaw joint clicked alarmingly and chewing became a problem. The pain was so bad I spent $6000 on a dental splint that I had to wear every night in an attempt to solve these pesky symptoms. A few months ago, I bit through the hard resin plastic of my splint. Turns out that the splint can cause your teeth to shift, making the splint no longer fit properly resulting in a paradoxical increase in clenching.

Refusing to shell out that kind of money again on what would be a seemingly temporary solution I decided to give the other treatment a try – botox. You can literally paralyze the jaw muscles to stop the clenching. Many people claim this as a miracle treatment. Stopping clenching, saving your teeth, and eradicating the pain. Your jaw muscles relax and you can finally get a good night’s sleep. I figured I had little to lose and without my splint the jaw clicking was quickly coming back. So, I found a place nearby with great reviews online and booked an appointment.

The place is a cosmetic beauty studio, offering all kinds of treatments – vampire facials, filler, and lifts. It is sleek and beautiful and entirely intimidating. The receptionist’s face is smooth and uniform, familiar in the way so many faces now are. The other clients I saw come and go were young, younger than me. One girl was just that – a girl. She hardly looked like she could drive or get served at a bar. But here she was.

But who am I to judge.

When it came time for me to get the botox in my jaw I shared my concerns about my forehead lines with the nurse. She kindly suggested some baby botox (which is just a very small dose) in my forehead and between my eyebrows to combat those frown lines. Now I don’t actually have any static wrinkles yet – but the constant furrowing of my brow is a harbinger of their eventual appearance. So, I paid, and she jabbed 6 tiny holes in my forehead along with the treatment into my jaw.

Now, for the record the botox into my jaw has worked a treat. After some initial discomfort, I am not clenching for the first time in my life. My jaw is still a little tight, but it is no longer causing me pain. I can chew and yawn freely.

The botox in my forehead is a different story entirely. After 5 or so days I noticed it had taken its full effect. Now I wouldn’t say I look hugely different. A little more relaxed, like I’ve had a Valium and nap or that I am untroubled by thoughts. But it turns out I cannot frown. Like at all. Try as I might my eyebrows can no longer knit together, the space between them is as flat and still as an unbothered ocean. Now I have never not once in my life been ‘chill’ about anything – good or bad. So, having a face that looks perpetually unbothered feels like a betrayal to my true self.

I hate it. I hate not being able to express my displeasure. Frowning, scowling, a furrowed brow – all of these are import tools in my face tool belt of expressing emotion. And I can no longer use them. I can still raise my eyebrows, expressing surprise or wonderment, but only slightly. It feels restrictive. I feel like half my face is stuck in a blank state, unable to freely emote whatever I wish to emote. The billboard of my face is unhelpfully blank. As someone whose face has, as my fiancé likes to say, ‘no inside voice,’ this is very disconcerting. Botox is only temporary and these effects will fade in approximately 4 – 6 months depending on how my body metabolizes the botulinum toxin, but still, it is uncomfortable.

What this little experiment has taught me is that I value my ability to use my face. And no amount of looking ‘fresh-faced’ can compensate for a good old-fashioned scowl.

But most importantly this adventure in womanhood has made me reflect on my relationship with the concept of aging. Botox is an extremely popular way to freeze the progress of time. Lots of people do it, its actually fairly common, being relatively cheap and non-invasive. We are all so collectively afraid of aging (and not because of the whole having to grapple with our mortality thing). Or maybe it is more accurate to say we are all so afraid of looking old. Especially as a woman. Beauty and youth are a kind of resource that has real power in the world. And as women we often have so little power.

But aging is only a curse if you are beholden to others perception. I personally find many older women and men attractive. I love grey hair and wrinkled faces. The kind of mischievous sparkle in the eye of a person that has lived a life beyond your reckoning. It’s the joy of soft bellies and round hips, saggy tits that have fed babies. Stretch marks like a silvery map – the terrain of a body remade as it literally made life. Or maybe it is just evidence of life well lived. A life lived joyfully, fully.

Caitlin Moran once advised that young women should become the beholders of beauty – not the beauty themselves. Be the thing that decides what is beautiful and dress yourself up in all its borrowed glory. Because we are not objects to be perceived as beautiful, we are people that get to decide what is beautiful to us.

And I have decided that looking old, the changing landscape of a face over the decades of a life, the laugh lines, the frown lines, the soft skin collapsing on itself is the kind of beautiful I want to be. I want all the wrinkles; I want evidence of every smile, every frown, and every emotion.

As women age, they are less visible in the world. Their stories are not heard. And I want to tell mine with a weathered face – quick to smile with joy, scowl with displeasure, and laugh raucously, bags under my eyes from carrying the grief of the ones I love.

That to me will be when I am at my most beautiful.

I am finally able to frown again

And I’m able to appreciate my flawed face