The lobby of the medspa I go to is decorated in an elegant way, although a bit trite and trend-chasing in its overall vibe, which I guess aptly illustrates the purpose of the establishment. The couch in the waiting room is nice, real leather and very soft, and you feel bad putting your sweating gas station iced coffee on the coffee table in front of it because it’s actually made of nice wood and also, there are no coasters.
Megan is definitely one of those medspa employees who looks like a medspa employee. She’s got an impossibly smooth face and expertly-applied makeup, perfectly plump lips, and professionally-maintained hair color and style. She looks good for her age, which is, unfortunately still obviously, her late 40s.
It’s not unfortunate that she looks her age; it’s unfortunate that so many women who get or want these procedures don’t realize that they don’t actually make you look all that much younger— they either make you look “refreshed” and “good for your age,” or they make you look lifeless, confusingly lumpy, and grotesque because you’ve gone face-blind and overdone it and have an irresponsible injector who wanted your money more than they wanted you to retain your dignity.
Megan is thankfully not that type, although I don’t think even the most oblivious straight dude in the world would look at her face and think it’s entirely natural. But Megan is an RN and part owner of the company who’s been injecting fillers and neurotoxins into people’s faces all day long for like twenty years now, so she not only knows that these things don’t make you look younger, they make you look… refreshed and good for your age. She, thankfully, is not one to oversell the magic — or purpose — of such procedures.
At the beginning of 2025, I remarked on how many celebrity and other women were openly saying they would dissolve their filler, reverse their BBLs, and stop dyeing their hair. Instead, it seems like everyone just got really, really skinny (and apparently still dye their hair), but kept up with the cosmetic procedures — including the seemingly counterintuitive new-ish trend of younger women having buccal fat removed to achieve “Instagram Face.”
The thing about a bunch of people getting skinny really quickly is that their faces are going to show it. All of the sudden, the youthful facial baby fat has been eviscerated and you are left with looser skin that visually ages your face. And a lot of those people who otherwise swore they’d never do such a thing decide to go to the medspa about it, not yet ready to so rapidly part with visible youth as a seeming punishment for becoming healthier. Gradually aging is one thing, something we sometimes refer to, however disingenuously, as “graceful”; aging abruptly, on the other hand, is what the kids call “hitting the wall,” and few of us are prepared to hit the wall with such velocity. Especially when some of you fuckers are so publicly mean about it.
The most salient critique against participating in the youth-chasing side of all of this is that is obscures the expectations of what a naturally-aging woman actually looks like to our children and teenage girls, and artificially raises the floor of expectations for other women regarding what they need to do to keep up with social expectations, and men for thinking this is what women are supposed to look like at 35, 45, 60.
This, of course, also directly reinforces the idea that women must remain youthful-looking, whether they are still dating and want to attract a man, or they’re partnered and want to keep him from leaving her for the fat-cheeked au pair who smells like nonstop ovulation. One way or another, the result is women chasing youth to either attract or retain men, whose general aesthetic preferences for younger women have never been a secret.
It makes sense to conclude that, since anti-aging cosmetic procedures are primarily done for the benefit of looking younger, or just better, in order to attract men, that their primary function is one of intrasexual competition, with the result being making oneself more attractive to beat other women of their age group to the available men. But while that may be an underlying cause for a lot of women— even all of us when we alter our appearances in any noticeable way, to some degree or another— I think that diagnosis is too reductive.
I have talked a bit before about how I’ve been both the “I’ll never do that shit” person and also how I’m now currently the person who is literally doing that shit.1 Part of my motivation was to restore some of the facial volume and symmetry I lost due to having a prosthetic eye, which gradually reduces the volume of the temple area on that side of the face due to muscle atrophy.
But I didn’t stop there, so this isn’t some kind of apologetic justification where I plead for your sympathy because it started as a restorative thing rather than a “make me look 22” thing, nor is it even a defense at all, as I don’t feel like I need to justify anything to anyone. But I have made some observations over the past year or so that I've been dabbling in the medspa world that make me question the common narratives that women are both doing this only for men, and also that we’re going it to compete with each other (for men).
It has never been more affordable— or socially acceptable— to not only get non-invasive cosmetic procedures like Botox, fillers, or laser treatments, but to talk about them openly. Many pixels have been spilled about this intriguing new trend of women openly discussing their cosmetic procedures with the public and recommending practitioners and specific procedures to their friends (or audiences), which is a stark contrast to the not-so-distant past when women would rarely admit to having had any work done, even incredibly obvious nose jobs or breast augmentation. Doing such a thing was seen as embarrassing or even low-class, the desperate last attempts of a vain woman to hold on to her rapidly diminishing beauty, the only power she was assumed to have ever cultivated for herself or maintained. Not so much, these days.
It’s rather obvious, like I mentioned before, that women who take steps, sometimes increasingly drastic ones, to look younger, are not doing it “for themselves,” but for men, or what they think men want them to look like, which is younger. And often, men say they want exactly the opposite, because they, like the rest of us, see so many high-profile examples of cosmetic procedures gone wrong, celebrities who now look part feline or mallard, and formerly pretty women who now look a decade older than they are because everything under their skin is now made of hyaluronic acid and they’re wearing way too much makeup. But, naturally, it’s a little more complicated than that.
First of all, it’s important to recognize two things: one, these women don’t usually hurt for male attention, especially the high-profile women. Second, the ones who do hurt for male attention, or who cannot seem to attract the “high status” male they are looking to acquire through such procedures, are not doing the same things as the ones who don’t have problems. They are doing things that rhyme, that are made in the same shape, but the primary difference between the two is class.
Do I say that a lot? I feel like I say that a lot. It’s the difference between a high-end salon that serves you champagne while they perfectly cut, color, and highlight your hair with the best smelling products, and plastic Amazon extensions in a color that doesn’t match your natural one, in a texture that isn’t even close to yours.
A wealthier woman will be able to afford quality practitioners, will likely begin low-level preventative procedures like Botox earlier, and will take cues from the women in her social class to keep herself looking polished at any age through careful bodily grooming, dress, diet, exercise, and makeup, not to mention her poise.
A working class woman might aspire to these same things, but she’s probably using a Groupon deal at a chiropractor’s office whose administrative assistant sticks the needle into her face instead of an experienced RN, and she might be choosing procedures that don’t refresh, but which dramatically enhance, in the way that is modeled around her by her own social class. Lip fillers, clothing that shows off or highlights attractive body parts, makeup that draws attention rather than subtly smooths out what she sees as imperfections without being obvious.
Another woman might opt out entirely for the simple fact that she either can’t afford it and smartly doesn’t want to risk the cheaper options, or she just has other priorities, and the people around her expect less of her and her appearance upkeep as she ages, because they aren’t doing it, either. Not because they’re especially principled about it or anything, they just can’t afford it and know how it goes. Relative to both the wealthier woman and the working class woman’s various types of beauty maintenance, this woman will likely be judged not simply for looking “old,” but for looking unkempt and “letting herself go,” and those are good synonyms for “poor” when it comes to aesthetics and how people judge the appearances of others (women). Because that's how we fuckin are, isn't it. Judgey assholes.
Anyway, when I decided to get a brow lift and my crows feet “treated” — both done with Dysport or Botox — I told most of the people I talk to regularly and sent before and after photos. The responses from the men were exactly what I expected, while the responses from the women were remarkably different.
My husband, for example, stared at my face for like five straight minutes before declaring it all pointless because he couldn’t tell the difference.
One male friend told me I didn’t need it, but he thought it was great that I was so happy with the results.
Another male friend made a bunch of jokes and sent me pictures of people who get extensive plastic surgery to look like cats on purpose.
Then I told a female friend. She said the difference between the before and after was pretty amazing, and she was thrilled for me. She asked about the different types of procedures and what they cost. She told me which procedures she’s thought about getting someday, which she’d never told me before.
I sent my sister the same photos and told her what I did. She was shocked and said she wanted to do the same thing and told me I better not come to the family reunion looking like her younger sister (she definitely looks younger than I do and she can still beat me in arm wrestling no matter how much time I spend at the gym, but I lol’d).
I sent a DM to a woman I have known for a while to ask her about her experiences. She was thrilled to hear I “finally” jumped on this bandwagon (she was one of those early Botoxers, but Groupon style, so she’s been through it all) but it came with a bunch of unsolicited advice, like telling me (again) that I should get my lips done (NO, GODDAMNIT) because she has some weird self-hating prejudice against naturally thin lips, which just made me more aggressively appreciative of my own.
Anyway. You can say whatever you want about how women will not criticize other women to their faces for stuff like this, how the female reactions I got are predictably saccharine, probably some level of fake, and don’t prove anything either useful or flattering, but that’s not what I’m getting at.
The takeaway here is that women are open about it with each other, the ones who haven’t done it are openly intrigued, and the ones who have are happy to give suggestions and share stories when asked, both the nightmares and the glowing recommendations. It doesn't mean women aren't competing with one another, but it means that this is one area that has been opened up enough that it's become no more serious to recommend a plastic surgeon or a medspa than it is to recommend a clothing or makeup brand. Only the most vicious women would deliberately set out to recommend something awful for you, and I've never experienced such a thing, myself. Even though I have, in fact, been told that I look good in short hair from other women and told not to cut it by various men throughout my life, I maintained short haircuts for years and was rarely disappointed in who was interested in me.
The other thing no one talks much about that flies directly in the face of the false expectations we are setting for younger women is that, again, we're more and more honest about it. Proactively, but without apology. Being proactively open about this kind of moderate and temporary “work” we've had done erases the idea that we're “supposed to” look that way at 35, 42, 53. It breaks open that very secret women used to keep about this stuff and tells the entire world exactly why we look the way we do at whatever age we are. Not hiding it, not being coy about our real age, not pretending we spent our teenage years tanning our pale bodies in the front yard and somehow managed not to wrinkle about it.
So, sure: I know the implications. I also don't let them go without addressing them openly and without judgment. I'm not like that other woman I mentioned who would point out facial “flaws” in another person and rudely (there's no way to make this not-rude, FYI) suggest what procedures they “should” have done. There is no “should” here. No one “should” do any of this. But you can if you want!
But also, before you whine and bitch about women like me getting the occasional Botox brow lift or temple filler, remember that you don't necessarily have the same experiences as me or other women who do make this allegedly socially irresponsible choice, and we're not all dumb enough to look like the new Mrs Bezos. If you can't afford Botox or you never see the sun so you managed to make it to your 40s without crows feet and especially if you're one of those tone deaf attention whores who posts selfies of yourself looking your age and insisting everyone thinks you look a decade younger, I'm just gonna say: okay. Whatever you say. You're either not even in a financial position to consider it in the first place, or you don’t know what it’s like to very suddenly not recognize your own face and are prematurely judging women you don’t know for their motives, or you're actually possibly just delusional. And that's okay. I also hope you never cave to the pressure and violate your own principles, which are honorable and which I respect. But your vocal hatred for my Botox only fuels my desire for more.
Before and after pictures of my own Botox and more from before and after the whole eye surgery thing, and also a weight loss before and after, under the paywall, for the morbidly curious.
