The thing about botox
On worry lines and ancestry, plus: Famesick read-a-long part one
It was a typically cool summer’s evening in Yorkshire and we were celebrating Adam’s parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. We had baked a bright red velvet cake for their ruby anniversary and a meringue layered with thinly sliced watermelon. Adam and I had only known each other for a year or so, so there were still aunts and uncles for me to meet, family friends going back decades, all fizzing with that warmth and kindness so common in the North of England.
Upon meeting one of Adam’s uncles — his dad’s brother — I was delighted by how obviously they were related. It was the smile! They had the same smile. And this smile isn’t just about the shape their mouths take, but the way it spreads all the way to their eyes. His uncle smiles like Adam does, with his entire face. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes!
These crinkles are one of my favourite things about my fiancé’s face, something that drew me to him when we first met, these lines that would appear as we dissolved into spells of silliness and giggles.
Someone said to me recently that Adam looks as if the sun shines out of him, and it’s true. He is pure golden retriever energy, lit from within, and it’s these eye crinkles that I recognised, suddenly, in the face of a man I’d just met. It brought me so much joy to see.
And so I ask you, dear reader. How can we love these lines so much in another person’s face and yet work so hard to erase our own?
I have my mother’s eleven lines. Those “worry lines” that sit between your eyebrows, though we could call them “focus lines” or “thinking lines” but alas, I don’t think those names will stick. My entire life I have been told I look like my mum. Considering she is objectively one of the most beautiful women I have ever met — like, startlingly so —I have always taken that as a compliment. I still do.
And yet, when I started to get those lines between my brows, I was mortified. On my mum’s face, they were always just a part of her, deepening as her brow furrowed while concentrating on something. But on me, I feared they made me look angry or stressed, when I wasn’t.
So at 27, I started wearing ‘Frownies’ to bed, these stick-on patches that hold your skin taut and prevent you from moving your face overnight. I’d wear them during the day while writing, too. Sleeping and writing seem to be when I frown the most.
But ‘Frownies’ can only take you so far, and in my early thirties I tried botox. Just between the brows at first. The nurse injecting me in an East London beauty salon warned, almost playfully, “careful love, this stuff is addictive!” And so every four or five months, back I’d go — cradling a mix of feminist shame and vain relief — to smooth my frown lines and reveal a face that looked more open, untroubled, relaxed.
I had my forehead done a few times too, and just once, my eye crinkles. But no. It wasn’t really about those parts of my face for me. I like my forehead moving — wild, I know! And I like my own smile that spreads to my eyes.
I also don’t think botox makes most people look younger. But it can make faces look less stressed, which is nearly the same thing, isn’t it? I was never worried about looking old — it was the distressed look I wanted gone.
I wish I could say that I stopped getting botox because I examined the shame I felt when I’d get it, or because I realised I was erasing an ancestral marking on my own face, or because WHO CARES If we have lines between our eyebrows, but alas, no. It was the pandemic. You remember the at-home haircuts and YouTubing how to dye your own eyelashes, well, I was right there with you, embracing my grown-out roots and painting my own nails. And, not getting botox.
In my life I’ve found that one of the most effective ways to redefine my relationship with something is to have a solid break from it. Ten years ago I stopped drinking alcohol for six months and I still feel the positive impact of that on how and when I drink today. A few years ago I stopped wearing makeup for six months. If I’m tangled up in something, a solid break often rewrites the story for me.
Which isn’t to say I never went back once the world was back on track, because I did. But only a couple of times. And since we started trying to conceive, it’s been completely off the table. There’ve been luteal-fuelled moments of vanity, and insecurity born from too many days scrolling a sea of frozen faces on Instagram, where I’ve wished I could walk into an injectable clinic and ask them to relax it all, smooth it over, calm my face down.
But I haven’t and I won’t.
I don’t want to erase lines that connect me to my mother, and her mother before her, and my sisters, and my thinking self and my focused self and the worrier in me, too. Yes, I worry! And I can’t be bothered to pretend otherwise.
I want my children to look at my face and see their grandmother. I want them to look at their own lines in years to come and see where they came from. I want to continue to look in the mirror or catch a photo of myself and enjoy the movement in my face, the expression, the emotion, the story.
Because a line on a face, a smile that spreads all the way to the eyes, these are our inheritance, handed to us. Writing this, I’ve just realised our children will have those eye crinkles too, and I’m crying.
Eye crinkles and a worry line. How delicious.
