My face all poked and prodded
My personal history and thoughts on injectables
When I left my partner in the spring of 2019, just months after losing my sister to cancer, I purchased a marathon training program from Runner’s World hoping a lofty goal would distract me from the unshakeable feeling that I’m just not meant for love. Grief locked me in robotic pursuit of self-optimization, my days mechanized by coffee, running, weed, and writing into the night. On the weekends I’d cut loose on awkward dates, drink vinegary red wine at places you’re not supposed to order red wine while my friends shot pool until close. So what I’m about to tell you was born in a fugue state of dubious selfhood. A period of prolonged escapism. And perhaps the fact that it persists as a driving force in my life means I’m still looking for the exit door.
I met my friend Brett in a dark bar one Saturday afternoon. He was with his friend, John and John’s new girlfriend. Kendall was forty-something to John’s 23 with tattoos, unruly red hair, and full lips that beckoned a kiss even from strangers; she was a charming Jewish Virgo who knew a lot about a lot and didn’t hesitate to tell you.
I learned quickly that Kendall made people look good for a living, and that she was very good at her job. She worked at one of the best places in the city for vulnerable, newly single girls like me to slip out over lunch for a pricey cocktail of whitening, tightening, and filling. It was Real Housewives of Rittenhouse Square. I was enticed.
A week later, Kendall texted me asking if I wanted to come in and try a new dermal filler called Revanesse Versa. “It’s just hyaluronic acid,” she explained, “your body naturally produces it and it’ll dissolve over time.” Kendall said she’d give it to me at cost if I shared my results on Instagram. A modern trade I was hip to, I bit at the offer. Lip augmentation was a quiet curiosity in the back of my mind. I wasn’t insecure about my lips; I thought I had a cute cupid’s bow and knew my way around some liner. But I’d always wondered what I’d look like with a little extra pout. I agreed to a consultation.
I trudged up the street to Kendall’s office on a windy Thursday afternoon in late June, over-caffeinated on an empty stomach (my surest ticket to panic under the wrong circumstances). I didn’t expect to be there long. We’d chat briefly. I’d decide whether this was right for me, and if so, I’d schedule the procedure for a later date. But before I knew it, the numbing cream kicked in and my mouth became more of an idea than a functional cavity—something I knew was there, but could not use. Heart pounding, I rubbed it off and told her if we were going to do this, I had to feel it. Anesthetics mark some loss of control that I couldn’t handle on top of the control I must have lost to be there in the first place.
My head floating somewhere above us, I felt like I was trapped in a refrigerator, the white walls sterile, cold, and enveloping. I was committed. There was no turning back. I begged for breaks between each jab of the microcannula. “I’m going to go blind or have a stroke,” I thought to myself, remembering every worst case scenario article I’d read online about injectors hitting arteries. I was about to ruin my life for bigger lips, and I was sure of it.
But this was no Groupon deal. Despite my throbbing sense of doom, I was in good hands. Twenty minutes later, Kendall held the mirror to my face and by god, I was beautiful—tanned and swollen—a fraud under fluorescent light like everything I swore I’d never be. She brought the practice owner into the room and they kept telling me how pretty I was, that I should do “commercial modeling.” Suddenly I understood how girls leave these appointments glowing and unashamed.
Much to my chagrin, I soon learned a good injector, one whose practice is not just aesthetic but highly clinical, both giveth and taketh away. As we took my “after” photos from unforgiving angles, I was informed of everything else that’s wrong with my face, from the scientific perspective of symmetry:
“Bump in the nose. What’s your ethnicity? Does it have cultural value to you? Carefully adding filler reduces dorsal hump visibility thus enhancing the side profile.”
“Weak chin. It’s important to consider the chin when adding volume to the lips. Let’s address that soon.”
“We need to take care of the nasolabial folds. How old are you? 27? That’s really young for this to be presenting so deeply. Are you a smoker?”
Etc. Etc.
Suddenly my quirks were greater cause for medical concern than an asymmetric mole. I didn’t even notice some of these flaws, and I’m not sure I ever would have had I not gotten my lips done by that particular person, on that particular day, in that particular state of fragility. One never considers the spatial and temporal elements of self-perception until it’s too late. I have contemplated the degree to which each imperfection makes me uglier every day since.
Nonetheless, I regret nothing.
I’ve now had lip injections three times, once each year since 2019. At my most recent appointment in April, I decided to try Botox for the first time. I went years with unchecked vision problems and had deep lines (they call them “11s”) between my eyebrows from squinting; so, I figured why not paralyze them for a few months to smooth things out? Botox was as quick and painless as Dr. Omene assured me it would be, the process oddly familiar, almost routine, like grabbing a coffee. Then it was on to the lips. Unlike popular fillers that have been around longer (e.g. Juvederm), Revanesse Versa boasts 1.2 mL per syringe versus the standard 1 mL. We still had some filler left when my lips were done, so Dr. Omene suggested adding it to my nasolabial folds (I call them “smile lines”). Since my first appointment where I learned I have those and that they are Unequivocally Bad, I’d considered having them filled. But research revealed an artery close by, that it was a riskier procedure. Dr. Omene smiled and complimented me for doing my homework, but insisted I trust that she, a whole ass doctor, would never inject close to that—that she would do this on herself if she had that little bit leftover. So in it went. You could see the difference instantly.
There is a very specific brand of self-inquiry that comes with having three cosmetic procedures in one sitting. I asked myself: Is this like tattoos where once you start, you can’t stop? Am I on track to be frozen-faced, dropping my kid off for equestrian in a white Benz and Lululemon? Surely there are worse evolutions, and I’ll probably never be able to afford equestrian, a Benz, Lululemon, or even this degree of facial upkeep. But those were only the most innocuous questions. I doubted my own integrity, if I could call myself good. A new reality was encroaching and I had to think swiftly about who I thought I was and who I actually am—the space between claimed by my face all poked and prodded in the name of beauty.
Early in life I realized the world made an empty promise to me about the goodness you’re rewarded for being yourself. You can be affable and altruistic and still, there will be someone who’d like to take your confidence into their own hands to twist and shrink it beyond recognition. In small towns, this torture reverberates. Everyone wants in on the joke.
When I first started taking French in middle school, one of my classmates asked our teacher how to say “big nose.” I became Grand Nez for the remainder of the year.
One Saturday evening, before I got braces, I went swimming with friends at the local rec center. When I got home and logged onto AIM, I had a message from some Tyler saying, “You looked great in your bikini.” My heart pounded with pre-teen validation until he followed up with, “... if only you’d fix those gross teeth.” Every smile for the camera became nervous thereafter until eventually, it disappeared.
My sister, god rest her 85-lb soul, may have coined the term “bromach,” which is how she described my midsection to anyone who would listen: the stomach sticks out further than the breasts. Despite being 117 lbs and a flyer on the cheerleading squad, the entire football team called me “Buddha” and would rub my stomach “for good luck” before games.
My looks were never really my own. If I wasn’t made fun of, I was ogled, groped in the hallway while bent over at my locker. Anything to reinforce that my physical vessel was under siege. And so my adult life has been a series of desperate attempts to gain control. I learned not just to accept the bump in my nose, but to find it beautiful and unique—elegance beyond Eurocentricity. I starved and ran my body into disciplined thinness, then ate my way back to something softer. I wore makeup, stopped wearing makeup, cut my hair, grew it out, and so on. Injectables were a natural stop on the road to autonomy.
In a piece for now-defunct Repeller, Romy Oltuski explains:
“Sometimes I look in the mirror and DON’T like what I see. And in those moments, the mandate to worship the skin I’m in feels almost as prescriptive as the imagery suggesting I lose ten pounds. It seems like a bait-and-switch: I may feel less shame for having cellulite, but instead I feel shame for not liking my cellulite. Are we simply replacing our dos and don’ts and shoulds with others?”
There’s nothing virtuous to me about forcing yourself to swallow your reflection. If you’re motivated to reject vanity, or just happen like your appearance as is, then good on you. But I’ve grown jaded, pursuing beauty in ways that “benefited” women as a collective over me as an individual. The question of, “Am I beholden to future generations?” was a burden I shed somewhere between my 2nd and 3rd syringe. There are larger cultural forces at play in every decision you make. You will always be complicit in something, so it might as well be exactly what you want.
Mass-market conversations around self-love often center on self-care, i.e. your portal to the elusive Love Zone is via SoulCycle and Dr. Dennis Gross face masks. It was only a matter of time before Botox and filler entered the chat. As a patron of pout, I can identify this as objectively dangerous. Has classism deluded us so far to call a $700 procedure that lasts 6 months “self-care?” Has accessibility lost its rhetorical value? If we are responsible patients, who choose experienced injectors and avoid alcohol for five days post-appointment, we can apply the same thoughtfulness to controlling the narrative. So let’s call injectables what they actually are: personal luxuries.
The fun thing about luxury is it’s completely unnecessary. It’s the heated leather seats. The seafood tower before the meal. As for aesthetics, each needle is just another instrument of fleeting hedonism like a vibrator or a martini glass. The life I want for myself invites pleasure for pleasure’s sake, the power of feeling delicious on my own accord. It doesn’t bend to meet ideals of plainness or simplicity. If I want to be indulgent, choosing to freeze my wrinkles over repeating some cute little mantra on aging every morning until it sticks, that’s my prerogative (#freebritney). I can’t act like there isn’t some twisted utility to it all, though—you don’t have to get ready when you stay ready, if you know what I mean. When my face is proverbially snatched, I tend to think less about walking out the door.
Beauty discourse is seductive. When I try to resist the conversation, she bats her lashes and reminds me of glitter lip gloss memories dying for release. I wasn’t sure I’d ever finish this piece, a confessional endorsement of risky glamour. I started writing it just days after that last appointment in April, sitting outside OCF Coffee House in Fairmount. A “55-degree sunless morning breeze rolled through my sweats,” or so I wrote. A blonde woman walked by, and for a moment, I wanted to be her. She was sturdy and practical, a ponytailed, 5’3, all-American frame built by CrossFit or triathlons, clad in REI chic. She walked her dog with Rescue Mom conviction—a chocolate lab mixed with something awkward and short, like a corgi. Here was a woman completely immune to vanity as my americano dribbled from my swollen, bruised lips. I think we could be friends. I think our hearts speak a common language of campfire, rare steak, Journey on the radio. One day we’ll hike together and she’ll turn to me and ask, “Who does your lips?”
Some names in this piece are changed for privacy purposes. If you enjoyed it, maybe you’ll consider supporting this newsletter monetarily for $5 a month. As always, thanks for reading. Now do your part and tell your friends.