Beauty and the Inner Beast

To Botox or not to Botox? On vanity, insecurity, and striving for self-acceptance in a looks-obsessed society

When I introduce myself as Alexa Joy Sherman Young, I often joke that I have multiple names for multiple personalities. I say this without intending any harm to those living with real, trauma-related diagnoses, but rather in the Walt Whitman “I contain multitudes” sense. And while I do find humor in it (some of my Hits magazine coworkers used to crack me up when they asked, “Which personality am I talking to now?”), it can also be pretty fucking frustrating when it comes to the whole “do I contradict myself?” part.

Most recently, my personalities came to blows over whether to get Botox and fillers, for like the eighth time in eleven years. I realize this isn’t all that deep as existential conflicts go, but sometimes neither am I. Ultimately, I went through with it, even though I publicly swore I wouldn’t. (Check out my friend Rebecca Woolf’s recent essay, “surgical enhancements may be a choice but so is choosing to ignore their implications,” which includes my comment about cancelling my appointment — which got approximately one million likes — and then a follow-up confessing I might still want to do it.)

I’m sure Restylane wasn’t on Walt’s radar when he said, “The past and present wilt — I have fill’d them, emptied them / And proceed to fill my next fold of the future,” but I guess it kind of applies? Still, that’s cold comfort, especially when it comes to my latest tryst with the neurotoxins, and not just because of the bruising and botched botulinum (which resulted in drooping eyelids).

What frustrates me most is not the disappointing results, but the eternal struggle over who I’m doing this for, and why I keep going back for more. I mean, I’ve been doing the inner work. I’ve been tuning out the anti-aging ads and perpetual pushing of beauty products. I’ve been scrutinizing my reflection less. I’ve even started to like the lines in my forehead, the wrinkles around my eyes, the angles of my face. (My neck is taking a bit longer to embrace but hey, baby steps.)

My point is: I’ve been making so much progress on the radical self-acceptance front. So what was I thinking when I re-booked that appointment? I guess I was thinking a lot of things. Like, multitudes.

Vanity Kills

First up, let’s talk vanity, which, at least in my case, is one hundred percent tied to insecurity. I could trace this back to being teased about the size of my nose as a kid, or the awkward developments that accompany puberty, or the inescapable messages from a looks-obsessed society constantly shoved in my supposedly imperfect face. Whatever the reasons, much like the battle with my body, which I wrote about here, the battle to be beautiful (whatever the hell that even means) also kicked in around the time I turned thirteen.

I specifically recall how, as the minutes until the first day of middle school ticked down, my social anxiety ticked up. Like a lot of girls at the time, I wanted to be pretty and popular, and my wicked sense of humor and book-smarts would obviously only get me so far. To really fit in with the in-crowd, I would at least need the right clothes, the right hair, and the right makeup.

After shopping for the raddest styles I could find at Contempo Casuals, I convinced my mom to take me to the downtown salon where she had a fabulous hairdresser (remember calling them that?). When we walked in, he boogied over looking like a Bee Gee — right down to the shaggy hair, open satin shirt, and gold chains — and said he knew exactly what to do with me. I emerged from that appointment with a freshly-feathered mini mullet, not unlike that of Julie in Valley Girl.

Next, we went to a weird drugstore that smelled like mothballs, where the lady behind the counter gave me a makeup tutorial. I left with a tube of liquid purple eyeshadow and a few other essentials, along with instructions on applying them.

My 1983 glowup

Over time, trying to alter my appearance became even more of a thing. From slathering on baby oil and lying out in the backyard, to drenching my hair with Sun-In, my mission — especially as a suburban SoCal white girl — was to get as tan and blonde as humanly possible. And don’t even get me started on all the endless drawers and bathroom cabinets full of skincare, makeup kits, and hair products (St. Ives Apricot Scrub! Pupa! Estee Lauder! Bonne Bell! Aqua Net! Salon Selectives! Crimping Irons!).

The Sun-In was like a gateway drug, and by high school I had progressed to saturating my hair with brown-bottle peroxide, dousing it before bed and letting it soak in and dry overnight. And oh, how it dried. After a decade of that abuse, combined with the heat from crimping and waving irons, my platinum hair fell out in clumps and I chopped most of it off (yet inexplicably continued using the peroxide, only more sparingly).

At least less hair made for a mean Madonna Halloween costume?

By some miracle, as I approached my thirties, I finally stopped worrying quite so much about how I looked — not completely, but some progress had been made. Maybe I was realizing there were more important things to be concerned about? Maybe I was feeling slightly more comfortable in my own skin? Maybe, just maybe, age and life experience were doing their thing?

But then they started doing their thing on my face.

Here I Go Again

In 2015, shortly after I turned 45, a few people I knew were getting Botox, and one of them referred me to a fancy place in Brentwood. She was still in her thirties, but I wanted a smoother complexion like hers and figured I’d give it a go. Besides, everybody seemed to be doing it, if social media was any indicator. (Thank goodness we become immune to peer pressure after high school, right?) Plus, this aesthetician specialized in super subtle results (because why spend thousands on something detectable?) — just a little refresh!

The appointment was nice, kind of like going to a spa with a side of pain and blood. But within a day or two, I had serious buyer’s remorse — mostly because the Botox had frozen the muscles above my brows so much that my eyelids were drooping, especially on the right side. I sent the aesthetician photos of my Frankenstein-like results, and she said to give it a few days — that it would settle and wear off, and that next time they’d use less in those areas.

As if there would be a next time!

Eventually it did wear off, but apparently so did my resolve to never again visit Cosmetic Neurotoxin Nation. Yes, I repeated the entire experience in 2017, complete with the disappointing results. A few years after that, I gave it another go, this time with my dermatologist, thinking he’s a doctor, so maybe it will be different. It wasn’t. And yet! I tried another doctor around my 50th birthday.

What’s the definition of insanity, again?

To my (or perhaps the pandemic’s?) credit, I waited another few years before trying a local aesthetician. That time, I didn’t hate the results, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going. Until a couple of years later. And then again last month when, after making and then cancelling my appointment, I caved.

Why???

Devil Inside

Here’s another fun fact about me: whenever someone (including one of my own personalities) tells me I shouldn’t do something, that’s precisely when I decide I should do it, and vice-versa. It’s a heady cocktail: one part devil’s advocate, one part black sheep, and two parts rebellious Gen-Xer.

In this case, on some level, I think I was rebelling against the rebellion — as if the voices telling me to stop getting injections were throwing down a gauntlet and I needed to rise to the challenge. I convinced myself I was resisting binary thinking. I would do it because I don’t like extremes. Nuance is essential. I can’t do black-and-white. I exist in the gray areas.

I do generally believe those things, which is why I concluded that never doing anything to my face would be as extreme as blindly buying into whatever the beauty biz was selling. Meaning I would only get a little bit. It would be a happy medium! As I said to a few people: It’s not like I’m going MAGA-Barbie on anyone … at our age, there’s only so much these injections can accomplish anyway.

Everybody’s Selling Something

There was one other thing tugging at me: I had a huge credit in my account at the med spa after agreeing to a membership the last time I’d gone in (before I learned about boundaries), and I didn’t want all those precious units of poison and plumper to go to waste. Could I have used those credits for a different treatment, one without needles? Sure! In fact, I did switch my initial appointment to a facial when I was feeling all anti-Botox.

But then I noticed the lines between my eyebrows again, and pondered the power of existing in the gray areas, and ultimately listened to my louder (but maybe not entirely wiser?) inner voice.

When I got to my appointment, the staff tried to talk me into doing five times as much as I’d planned. As the aesthetician and her assistant tag-teamed, showing me images of other women’s before-and-afters and handing me brochures for Sculptra (only $3,900, including your follow-up appointments!), I proudly told them I was on a path to radical self-acceptance, and that I almost didn’t go in at all because I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep getting injections.

They exchanged amused glances, and then the aesthetician looked at my neck, noting that Botox could help with that too. I told her it hadn’t worked before. She said it was about consistency. I insisted I was done worrying about it. “Of course! Only what you’re comfortable with. No pressure,” she said, moving on.

When she traced her finger over the lines in my forehead, I said I knew she couldn’t get rid of those because otherwise my brows would droop and I definitely didn’t want that. She replied that at some point I could do a blepharoplasty, and I said I’d researched and decided against any kind of surgery. “I’m trying to embrace the aging process more,” I told her and her assistant. “I am 56 and women are allowed to look their age!”

At least the assistant seemed to consider that for a moment, and I’m telling you, I was so proud of how I resisted all the upsells.

And yet.

The next day, after getting the agreed-upon injections, I looked like I’d been punched in the face. Then, the eyebrows began their descent, but on separate schedules. I texted the aesthetician and she said to come in immediately so she could try to undo some of the damage. But when I went in, she added another drop, to try and speed up the droop on the other brow.

This Time

I know all the crap they shot into my face will eventually wear off, and I’m counting the days until that happens. I’m not lying when I say I miss the wrinkles around my eyes, the lines in my forehead, the sharper cheekbones. I miss looking like me, which, ironically, is what most people say before they sign up for these things, not after.

Truly, I can’t wait to be able to smile again without looking like a psycho-killer. I’m excited to laugh and look like I’m laughing. I’m desperate to raise my eyebrows, to open my eyes, big and wide, to have my face and expressions match my multiple emotions (and personalities).

And even though I’ve said never again, I have a feeling that when the effects completely wear off, the temptation will rear its ugly head once more. I’ll scrutinize the elevens between my brows. Weigh the pros and cons. Try to talk myself out of it and then hear that little voice, begging for just one more hit and insisting things will be better this time … you will be better this time … just look in that mirror … don’t you want to be the fairest of them all?

Then I’ll think about the things I could do with the money instead — important, meaningful things — and how much I’ve already wasted through the years. I’ll consider why I’m doing it, for whom I’m doing it, and especially how much is too much. Because this wasn’t only about regretting my decision, it was about the aesthetician not listening to me and going too far even when I told her not to.

After all that, maybe I’ll even make another public declaration: I’m done and I really mean it this time.

But will I stick to it? I guess we’ll have to wait and see what my multiple personalities decide.

Tale as old as time…

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