I promised we would talk about Botox so let’s go!

I have not made a secret of the fact that I get Botox (and have since about 2017 or so), but I don’t talk about it a lot. It’s not a choice that has ever felt fraught for me, probably because my original motivation wasn’t tied to considerations of youthfulness or attractiveness. Over the years, I have not been tempted to expand my regimen to include other types of cosmetic interventions, like fillers, chemical peels, laser treatments, etc. Now, at 46, my face has lost quite a bit of volume and definitely looks ‘older’ than in the past. Sometimes, that does bother me a bit. But, still, I have not taken any other steps to ‘address the issue’, as it were — nor, at this point, am I planning to.

I started getting Botox because of my Resting Bitch Face. I can’t tell you how often I’ve had people mention, once we started talking, that they initially thought I was intimidating/cold/aloof, etc. At rest, my face does have a tendency to look ‘severe’ and, in the past, that was exacerbated by my ‘elevens’ (the large wrinkles between my eyebrows) that made me seem like I was constantly frowning even when I wasn’t. I got Botox to smooth them out, and found it helped quite a bit. After a while, I extended the injections to my forehead as well, because it felt weird to have a smooth section around my eyebrows and deep wrinkles immediately above. I have an extremely expressive face so, when I talked, it was noticeable.

Thinking about all this now made me realize some uncomfortable things. First of all, that my decision was definitely influenced by societal expectations for women not to present as ‘bitchy’ or ‘intimidating’ — something we don’t require of men. I am working to make peace with that. For better or worse, it is an economically rational choice (my appearance does impact my professional life, as someone who works in a client-facing role). I know that, by making it, I am reinforcing the societal norm, and that is something I am grappling with. When and how will it be possible for me to stop participating? I have a lot of relative privilege, given my race, profession, financial situation, etc., but I am still part of the ‘rat race’ for the time being. Will it be different once I retire? Maybe.

The second and more challenging realization is that my decision represented an attempt to compensate for and mask my own past trauma. This has brought up some very heavy feelings for me. Let me explain.

I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. I have since come to believe that my neurodiversity includes a component of autism as well. I am high-functioning and have spent my entire life masking the things I felt were “odd” about me, to try to fit in. From a very early age, I had a sense of being a kind of alien, an observer looking in. That feeling was exacerbated when I became an immigrant. My first experiences in a new country (and language) were mostly unpleasant ones. My new classmates ostracized and bullied me, probably for many reasons, not only my foreignness. I was twelve when the bullying started — terrible timing, given how difficult adolescence can be in general, and how formative. It has taken me years of therapy to come to terms with everything that happened and to understand that I have lingering psychological damage from it.

My only ‘weapon’ against my bullies was to retreat into a shell of pretend detachment. No matter how devastated I was inside, I was determined not to let it show. I stayed quiet, detached, seemingly indifferent to people. I learned not to approach strangers, but to wait for them to talk to me first. It worked … in the sense that, after a while, my bullies got bored and left me alone. But it also meant that, from that point on, I struggled to make friends. My so-called aloofness was a wall that kept out potential foes and friends alike. I didn’t realize that until later, when I was in my early 20s — and that’s when it became an extra source of worry and shame. Once again, I was failing to fit in. So, I began to over-correct. To go out of my way to show people that, no, I’m not a bitch, I’m just shy (and terrified of how others will engage with me). Honestly, it was exhausting. Getting Botox was the easiest part.

But, looking back, it’s also maddening. Here, again, was a case of me changing something about myself to accommodate other people. To make them comfortable around me, when I was not extended that same grace when I needed it.

I am due for my biannual Botox appointment next month, and for the first time, I am questioning whether I want to go through with it or not. I haven’t decided yet. I probably will do it again, if only because I don’t feel ready to make a definitive decision in what still feels like the heat of the moment (emotionally speaking), so keeping the status quo seems like the way to go in the meantime.

But there is something else I wanted to share in this context, which has been on my mind since I listened to that episode of Diabolical Lies where they talked about fillers. Briefly, I found the discussion around the effects of fillers — how they don’t actually get absorbed in the body as people have been told, but rather just move around, leading over time to the appearance of ‘filler face’ — really fascinating and thought provoking. One of the hosts made the point that, basically, the first dose of fillers looks amazing, but that same effect can never be recreated again and chasing it leads to increasingly worse/less ‘natural’ results. Hearing this made me glad that I was never tempted to start down that path, but it also made me think about something else.

Cosmetic procedures become a status symbol in the last 20 years or so, but now that some of them are becoming increasingly accessible to ‘regular’ people (aka non-millionaires), I am wondering if we are going to see a swing in the opposite direction. Not to get bogged down in Bourdieu, but status symbols derive their power from inaccessibility. They are meant to differentiate and demarcate the boundaries between classes. If normies can get fillers, what are the rich going to do? Sure, they can get better fillers from better (more expensive) injectors, but it sounds like that’s a case of diminishing returns even for the rich. Look at Hollywood actresses over a certain age — or, hell, even certain billionaires who shall remain nameless. We have already started seeing signs of a trend of ‘glorifying’ visible aging. Mostly in white, affluent women — and mostly limited to white hair and a few aesthetic wrinkles — but still. I am curious to see where we go from here.

If aging becomes the next status symbol, it would make sense. Think about it. It signals that the person has the privilege to opt out of societal norms of beauty, at least the prevailing ones, but also the privilege to age ‘gracefully’. And it’s extra desirable because, for many people, it’s out of reach if, up to now, they have been using cosmetic procedures to look younger. Again, remember that fillers cannot be dissolved (without removing natural volume as well). So, basically, aging is a “look” only some can achieve now. Of course, we would still be talking about a curated version of aging, not the regular normie kind … but you know what I mean.

For this to happen, though, society would have to ease up on its obsession with youth, which has been a driving force — and, in recent decades, a status symbol — for a very, very long time. Will the pendulum fully swing? Or is society simply going to redefine the correct way to look youthful, to introduce new barriers to keep out the ‘barbarians’ trying to climb to the top of the status totem pole? Something to keep an eye on, if you’re interested in cultural phenomena 😉

We survived the first week of high school, huzzah! There were one or two hiccups along the way, but all in all, everything went pretty well. I am still unable to compute how it’s possible that my kid is in a high school. More than anything, that fact puts my own age into perspective. Because I see my son, the high-schooler, looking at me like I have all the answers and I realize that I am not, in fact, just a few years removed from where he’s at. More like 30, hah!

Not gonna lie, it always trips me up trying to imagine how my kids look at me. Even now, there is a world of difference (in my head) between me and my parents, and the idea that someone who is only a few years shy of adulthood sees me in the same way I see my parents is just WILD. More so than anything else in my life, my relationship with my parents remains a fossil of a time gone by. I might be 46, but I’m still 16 when it comes to my dad. And that’s not to say that he doesn’t treat me as an adult, or anything; just that, emotionally, we will always be on two sides of a certain divide. Even after 15 years as a mother, it’s still hard to process the fact that I have jumped to the other side — at least as far as my kids are concerned.

In other exciting news, my proof copy of Past Perfect Murder came in this week! I don’t think I’ve shared the cover before, so here it is:

I love it so much! My cover designer, Juliane Van Huizen, did a fantastic job again. It fits the vibe of the book so well, as well as the series as a whole. In this one, Inspector Hawthorne goes on a ‘working holiday’ in a small, idyllic English village, trying to discover if a couple of recent deaths are as accidental as they appear, or the work of a clever murderer. If you love Agatha Christie and Midsomer Murders, this is the perfect cozy read for you 😉 It’s coming out in October so stay tuned.

The start of the new football season (and the various dramas of the player transfer window) has filled up the little free time I’ve had (not devoted to writing/editing/prepping for publication), but I will not bore you with the details. I am thinking about doing a fantasy league sort of thing and forcing my husband to play along because he’s the only person I know in real life who is even remotely interested in football. Gonna call it a marital bonding exercise … though it might result in more fights than bonding, lmao! I will just say, following football is better than watching reality TV. So much drama, so many drama queens. I’m very happy with my decision to get back into (spectating) the sport, because everything else going on in the world right now is an absolute dumpster fire.

My daughter’s birthday is on Monday — she’ll be officially a teenager, wish me luck! — so I need to get my butt in gear and make some plans. I promised her a fun day, choose-your-own-adventure style, but that means I still have to come up with a menu of choices and rough schedule. The good news is that, since we’re practically the same person, we are going to have a blast together, no matter what. There will be books, and ramen, and boba tea involved, for sure.

Have a great weekend!

Recently, I listened to two fascinating podcast episodes that converged on a theme that left me with a lot to chew over. The first one is an older (2024) episode of Diabolical Lies, “Taylor Swift, Injectables, and Other Genres of Magical Thinking.” The second is a recent episode of Culture Study, “The Politics of White Women’s Hair,” in which Anne Helen Petersen interviewed Sarah Mesle, the author of Tangled: Seven Iconic Moments in White Women’s Hair and What They Tell Us About Power, Pleasure, and Complicity. I can’t recommend both enough, and I am putting the book on my library request list too. There is a lot to unpack in their respective discussions, but one of the main themes could be summed up as: what is the ‘right way to woman’ and how does that uphold existing race and class structures.

The bottom line is that women — including those at the top of the hierarchy of marginalized groups thanks to their whiteness –always exist in a precarious position vis-a-vis power in a patriarchal capitalism society and that ‘womaning’ the right way is a hamster wheel of existential futility. It sounds depressing and it is. But at the micro level of beauty trends and such, it’s fascinating to observe how the machinery works to keep the hamster wheel constantly turning, exhausting women’s mental, emotional, and financial resources. And I think it’s a useful exercise because it exposes the guts of the lie; the more you see it for what it is, the less compelling it becomes.

Both episodes led me down tangents of reflection about my own engagement with beauty ideals. It’s natural to want to think that one is wise to capitalist trickery — who wants to admit they can be manipulated without their knowledge? — and surprisingly easy to reassure oneself that this is, in fact, the case. “I do X because I like X, not because society tells me that I should do X; that’s just a coincidence.” And, actually, the first part of that statement is probably true, in many cases. It’s possible to genuinely believe that a particular preference is the product of free, uninfluenced choice — even when it’s not. In most cases, it’s not … because we live in a society, not on a deserted island, and are subject to social conditioning from the moment we are born. But Western society is powered by the illusion of free choice and untrammelled individualism, so the system requires that people believe it.

I don’t think there is something inherently wrong about making decisions that are influenced by external forces, whether in our environment, social norms, etc. People are social creatures, and there is no getting away from that. But I do think it’s important to not be afraid to examine what those influences are, and how and why they exert themselves on us. We need to see the machinery clearly. I can tell you, it can be pretty darn uncomfortable. The discomfort of accepting one isn’t free of external influence is the easy part (hard as it may seem at first). It’s a lot harder to dig deeper and confront the fact that some choices which, on the surface, seem either value-neutral or aligned with one’s consciously held values are, actually, a lot more complicated and ‘messy’ than they appear.

And it’s hard to sit with that messiness — because, sometimes, that’s all you can do, at least to start.

That’s the stage I’m currently at: sitting with the mess of unpacked choices.

For example: hair. We could talk about this for hours, but I’ll try to keep it brief. For most of my 30s, I rocked various short haircuts. Then, when the pandemic hit, I stopped cutting it — first for practical reasons, then as a kind of challenge (how long can I go?), and finally as an aesthetic choice. I decided that I liked long hair on me and, since hair takes forever to grow, keeping it long made more sense than going through a constant cut-grow cycle.

That was 5 years ago, and my hair has stayed long. It’s currently almost down to my butt, because I haven’t had a trim in about 4 or 5 months. I’ve gotten really lazy about haircuts, which is a nice bonus of long hair. [Anything that allows me to be lazy and not have to do something is great in my books.] This past week, I’ve been thinking about why I keep my hair long, digging deeper than the ‘obvious’ reasons I just gave. One of the reasons that surfaced is that my long hair is a protest against the idea of “age appropriateness”. I’m not sure if it’s still the message that young women receive these days, but when I was in my 20s, the general social consensus was that, after a certain age, women should not have long hair. That long hair wasn’t polished/elegant/mature enough. That there is a whiff of desperation about long hair on older woman; clinging on to one’s youth and fooling nobody.

I like long hair in the same way that I like wearing clothes I wore in my twenties: it doesn’t make me feel like I’m 26 again, but it does make me feel like I’m not ‘trapped’ by my age. I don’t want to be defined by my age, so I don’t confine myself to the aesthetics that supposedly define my age. I love being in my 40s; I love the wisdom and experience and personal growth I’ve earned getting here. I am not interested in disavowing those things by pretending to be younger. I want to celebrate them … but I also want to challenge some aspects of what supposedly comes with age. Or, rather, I want to enlarge the definition. Passion, curiosity, and excitement don’t only belong to youth; they don’t need to be jettisoned in order to give experience its due. Wisdom and curiosity can co-exist. They should coexist.

I am no less vital at 46 than I was at 26, whatever biology might dictate. And I want the world to see that. Long hair is one of my signals.

But …

It’s more complicated than that. Because long hair carries many more and complex connotations. I might say (and believe) that my meaning is X, but that doesn’t exclude Y and Z from the conversation. If long hair is equated with youth, and youth has a premium in society, and I am a woman who has been conditioned from childhood to strive for social status, can I truly say that my choice to have long hair is completely divorced from any consideration of social value? Is there not a part of me, unconscious or otherwise, that enjoys and benefits from the privilege that is conferred by proximity to youth? There probably is, much as I don’t like to think about it or accept it.

Does that mean that I am going to cut my hair short now?

No, of course not. What long hair means to me hasn’t changed. The fact that I still, experientially, enjoy having long hair hasn’t changed. Cutting my hair doesn’t save me from the hamster wheel. Because if it says, on one hand, “I reject the supremacy of youth,” it also puts me back into the “women of a certain age should look like this” bucket.

So, what was the point of the whole exercise? To understand what lies behind a choice that seems reflexive — the values, the messages, the nuances. That clarity is a good thing. Being able to confront uncomfortable facts and grapple with nuances and hold contradictions is part of growing up, growing wise.

I was going to talk about Botox next, but this post is already too long so let’s save that for another time.

I would love to hear your thoughts, especially if you’ve had a chance to listen to the podcasts I mentioned. Let’s talk about it in the comments!