botox and bookclubs

a few months ago i won a free botox treatment.

actually, i won either my choice of a botox treatment or a latisse treatment. both options scared me, but eventually i decided to get botox.

i hear two questions come back at me through the internets.

1- why?

and 2- why???

you guys ask such good questions.

mostly because i can’t imagine ever paying for botox. i don’t mind wrinkles, especially smile lines. also, i’m in my 30’s so i don’t have a lot of wrinkles to worry about.

but i’m curious about it. and it was free.

so i decided to inject poison into my face in an attempt to hold on to my fading beauty-- for science.

anyhoodle- i got 5 injections right between my eyebrows by an expressionless, duck-faced nurse  who calmly told me not to bend over or lay back for the next 8 hours so that the botox wouldn’t move around.

i worry that maybe you skimmed over that paragraph. again, the duck-faced nurse told me not to bend over because the poison in my face would move around.

it took maybe ten minutes. it didn’t burn or sting, but it did feel like someone was sticking a needle into my head 5 times and it did make this faint popping noise that for some reason freaked me out more than anything else.

the most terrifying part? when i stopped for gas on my way home and bent over to pick up something and remembered that i wasn’t supposed to bend over or the botox would move around.

and three days later, i looked 10 years younger! or exactly the same.

i don’t know that i feel or look any different. i can still move my face, but my scowling is a little less scowly and it takes more effort for me to make certain squinty expressions. which actually makes me wonder if i’m somehow making my face muscles stronger so that once the botox wears off (in a few months) i’ll have mega muscles between my eyebrows. (science!)

i used to mentally picture a certain look when i thought of botox. but now that i know what a little bit of botox actually looks like, i realize that the creepy, expressionless duck faces are because of fillers and overuse. also, now that i know what a little bit of botox looks like, i’m pretty sure it is way more prevalent than i thought it was.

so would i get botox again? sure-- if it were free. it’s more than i would pay to change something that i don’t really care about (i’m way more likely to spend money on my hair or clothes or something). but it wasn’t invasive, it wasn’t painful. the biggest downside i can think of is how addictive it could be. botox takes a few days to kick in, so for the first few days after i got it, every time i looked in the mirror i would glare into the mirror to see if i could still move my eyebrows. and then i’d look at my face and look at all the lines i never noticed before. but eventually i forgot about it, because i truly don’t care. i’m insecure about other things. but i can see how it would get addictive to dull and eventually fill in every wrinkle.

(botox: a gateway drug.)

the last thing i want to talk about is a discussion i had in my book club about a year ago. we read “snowflower and the secret fan” (mediocre) and got into a discussion about footbinding (a big part of the book). my understanding of chinese footbinding is this… when girls were about 5, their toes were broken and folded under their feet. their arches were also broken. then the feet were bound tightly so that the deformed, broken foot couldn’t heal or grow properly. women were essentially crippled and unable to walk with ease. they had to stay indoors and sometimes died from infection. the reason for doing this was that the small delicate feet were attractive and helpful in getting a good husband.

so in my book club we talked about how barbaric it was to force young girls to do this. seriously, please google "foot binding" if you want to vomit.

and then, of course, the discussion turned to the barbaric things women do to their bodies now. plastic surgery and whatnot. and i was the only person to fight the correlation.

because taking a young girl and breaking her feet painfully and slowly, crippling her and potentially killing her, with the sole aim of marrying her off is cruel and disempowering.

a woman getting plastic surgery still has control over what is being done to her body. she might be doing it for disempowering reasons, but she is still the one doing it. also, if a woman gets breast implants, she isn’t permanently crippling herself.

even metaphorically.

i don’t know how i feel about people getting plastic surgery. where is the line between vanity and self care? why is it more socially acceptable to get veneers, than a nose job? why is it okay to get a facial, but not botox? why is it okay to wear makeup as long as it doesn’t look like you’re wearing makeup? why (in my religion) is it okay to wear a tight shirt, but not one that shows your shoulders?

i think the answer is that it’s a personal decision and there are a lot of internal factors that can’t be quantified. my general belief is that my main focus on any given day should be outwards. my focus should be on working and learning and helping people. i also know firsthand that sometimes my insecurities can be a horrible and paralyzing form of vanity. ideally, i would say that i should just transcend my insecurities. i should exercise and eat right because of how healthy it makes me, not because i’ll lose weight. i should love the way i look without makeup because, hashtag i woke up like this. but that isn’t going to be possible. so i try and find a happy medium. i do what i can to feel good about myself so that when i leave my house, i don’t think about what i look like.

where do you guys and gals fall on this issue? do you think cosmetic procedures increase confidence or do you think they cause confidence problems?

basically, here’s what i want you to take away from my botox and book club experiences:

1. character matters more than appearance, 2. you can’t serve other people if you’re preoccupied with the way you look, 3. footbinding was barbaric. please do not bind your daughters’ feet.