Why I Don't Get Facial Botox Or Fillers & What I Do Instead
The whole your face as a vintage car thing etc etc.
Last week, I posted something that Dianna Cohen (brilliant founder of haircare line Crown Affair) said in an interview for Into The Gloss, in which she paraphrased something I said at lunch with her recently. (Wow if you could follow that sentence, good for you)
Her quote was:
Kudos to her for making me sound cleverer and more articulate than I likely was at that lunch. The analogy took off.
What I think I initially said was in comparing my face to a beautiful pale gray leather couch we have in our house, but the vintage car is a much better comparison. My dad, very wise, visited recently and commented on how lovely the couch is, but that we need to be less precious with it. He said something like, “It’s going to look fucked up for a while before it becomes fucked up enough to be beautiful again.” That was my aha - that was how I aspire to approach aging. And I say aspire to because nothing is absolute. And I don’t want to be crucified if I do go back to putting fillers and botox in my face, because God knows what’s going to happen when things truly start falling apart.
But anyway, in a nutshell, yes. I quit putting Botox and Filler in my face over a year ago. I still get some Botox in my neck, because according to my pal Christina at GoodSkin (she is truly the best), I have extremely strong and active neck muscles (kind of Jim Carey-esque, honestly) and they tug on my jowls. So if we weaken those muscles, there’ll be less tugging, therefore less sagging. I still have full expression in my face, but that’s the 10000% truth.
This is all a very meandering way to get to the point - which is a primer on what I do do to try and let my skin age gracefully, and all the things I do to care for my mug. And I’m not saying “Drink water,” or “Sleep on a silk pillowcase,” because sure, those things are great (I do sleep on a silk pillowcase, I do not drink very much water if any on a daily basis) but I’m talking about the doctor related or chemical things I do to help soften the transition to the inevitable.
Here we go, along with a picture of me with some bad Botox and extremely waxy forehead.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Earl Earl by Laurel Pantin to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.