By Mindy Isser
The algorithm knows I am a 35-year-old woman. It knows I am a mother with disposable income. It either knows, or just assumes, I’m worried about my appearance. Each day there’s a new ad or Reel or post targeting my millennial-specific insecurities: the new lines next to my eyes and mouth, the dullness of my skin, my drooping chin, my permanently postpartum body. A dermatologist who tells me she knows the secret to slow aging, product linked below. A self-identified stay-at-home-mom whose income is much higher than my own (thanks to her many brand partnerships) hocking a wrinkle-patch company that’ll get rid of your “elevens,” no Botox required! And Alison Roman, who I love and admire, sharing how she found a dermatologist who made her “eyebrows arch perfectly” thanks to Botox.
It’s hard to write about beauty and aging without stating the obvious: We probably all want to be considered attractive, and we live in a society where corporations spend billions of dollars telling us that we are never attractive enough — and actually, we’re getting uglier as each second goes by! — but maybe we would be if we bought this one specific thing (and then the next thing, and then the next thing). Anyone who has taken Women’s Studies 101 already knows that what we believe to be attractive is mostly a social construct and has little basis in our material and objective reality — and yet we all continue to re-enforce these norms and expectations by participating in them. I’m not encouraging or even suggesting that it’s remotely feasible to attempt to “opt out” of this, as I know that would at the very least have professional repercussions for many of us, in addition to personal. Not to mention: it’s just who we are now. I’ve spent more than 20 years learning how to be a woman in the world. The things I was taught to like are now just the things I like.
In middle school, I begged my mom to let me shave my legs. Another girl in our class — a popular girl, but our moms were friends — started shaving, which gave me cover; if her mom okay’d it, surely mine would too, and she did. My sister and I practically skipped to the RiteAid a few blocks away, giddy to buy a razor (Venus, obviously) and shaving cream (Skintimate, which came free with the razor). I remember how beautiful I thought my legs looked right after. While I took a few years off from shaving, I still think my legs look better hairless: shiny and smooth and feminine. Sometimes I’m sad to think about how much time I’ve wasted bent over, shaving from my ankle all the way to the tops of my thigh, and all the ways my skin has been irritated or the times I’ve cut myself, and even the money I’ve spent on razors and blades and shaving cream. But now it’s just a ritual, something I complain about but also do without thinking, and truthfully, it’s something I often look forward to. It’s part of my getting-ready routine, it makes me feel beautiful. It’s the same feeling as when I put in my contact lenses, or put on some blush or mascara. I am still myself, just better — a prettier, brighter version of me.
When I was younger I was beautiful, but of course I didn’t know it. This is where everyone starts rolling their eyes (don’t worry, I do too). People might chime in, You are still beautiful! And others will think, You just want people to tell you that you’re beautiful! And still more will think and maybe even say, You were never beautiful. Okay, fine, whatever, thanks or no thanks. I have spent so much time thinking about how I look, I might as well write about it.
Ten or fifteen years ago, my best friend’s mom told us a story of seeing a photo of herself when she was our age. She looked at it and cried because she was so beautiful and she never thought she was beautiful, and “now it’s too late.” She said this almost desperately. Now, when I look at pictures of myself at 15, 20, or 25, I do the same thing: sigh dramatically and say, I wish I knew I was beautiful then! But when I look at those photos I also remember the unbearable pain and anguish of being a teen girl trying to be beautiful.
Now I am less beautiful, but it also feels so much less important, so much less urgent. With age comes wisdom, or maybe more confidence, or if not those two things, perhaps acceptance. Sometimes I’ll complain to my friends about a specific thing — something that feels wrong or ugly or droopy — and then I’ll just say, “but it is what it is!” We laugh, we move on. But I still can’t fully let go.
I’ve been obsessed with Kris Jenner lately. Her new face hurts to look at. She isn’t even frozen in time, she went back in time. She is 70 years old, but she looks younger than me. She doesn’t look like a real person anymore, neither do some of her daughters; they all have the same face. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop thinking about her as an old woman, dying or dead, but looking so young. It’s perverse. So many faces exist in this unreality now, bright and smooth and snatched.
I’m not immune. I could buy a serum and I do, I could do Botox but I won’t. No judgement!, I’m supposed to add, with my hands up and waving, No judgement, do whatever works for you! I too hear the siren song of permanent and semi-permanent cosmetic procedures. Who doesn’t want to be young and beautiful forever? But I don’t want to lose my face. I don’t want to lose the person I am and the ability to smile and laugh and cry and scream and shake naturally, the things that make me human. And I am angry that this is what our society expects from women and I am angry that so many people make so much money off of this expectation. I am sad and frustrated that we all give in, in our own ways, whether it’s surgery or a procedure or a treatment or yes, even makeup. I am annoyed that so many people buy into choice feminism and think that their decisions exist in an apolitical vacuum, and I am annoyed that expressing political views often gets whittled down to aesthetics and consumer choices. And, honestly, I am jealous that so many people look so much better than me. Maybe I’m not judging — it’s more complicated than that — but I am disagreeing with the decision, if for no other reason than not wanting to feel pressure to do the same. If everyone around me stops aging but I continue on, I am the odd one out. I am the one doing womanhood wrong.
We look to those around us to set the standard for normalcy. When one friend gets Botox I say huh, okay, interesting. When a second and a third get Botox I think, am I supposed to do this too? Maybe I’m being too harsh. Last March, I had a preventative double mastectomy to bring my likelihood of breast cancer from the 50 to 80 percent range down to a much more reasonable 5 percent (I have BRCA1). I am grateful that, because of this surgery, I will hopefully live a long and healthy life alongside my husband and son and beloved friends.
But also, I feel a bit of shame. About a month after the mastectomy I got reconstructive surgery. I couldn’t imagine feeling like a woman — feeling like myself — without breasts. But my breasts, or whatever they are now, can’t nurse a baby. They provide no sexual pleasure for me. The skin on my chest is completely numb. They probably provide very little sexual pleasure for my husband, because I’m still barely comfortable with him touching me there. I have no use for breasts except to make me feel like a woman. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what I did — I and everyone else who needs it deserves access to gender-affirming care. I truly believe that. But what I wanted was to be able to look in the mirror and like what I see. Isn’t that the same reason people get Botox and filler and lip flips and blepharoplasty and face lifts and whatever else plastic surgeons have cooked up?
A few months ago, I got a revision to try to make my breasts look a little nicer. Without going into too much detail, the initial reconstruction is focused more on getting the tissues to connect in a healthy way, with aesthetics being secondary — 80 percent of women who do what I did also get a revision. This surgery was for no other reason than vanity. And I am vain! I am not above any of it! I have a multi-step skincare routine, I pluck my eyebrows, I wear makeup, I shave my legs and my armpits and do a variety of different things to my pubic hair depending on the time of year and other factors, but I want everyone to know that I’m resentful about that expectation. (If you do nothing to your pubic hair, you’re the woman at the pool or at the beach “with pubic hair,” forced into making some kind of “the personal is political” statement, even if you just don’t want to spend money for someone to pour hot wax on your labia or deal with razor burn.) My plastic surgeon has assured me that I can continue to get revision surgeries until I’m happy with how my breasts look. I’m genuinely grateful to have that option and that it’s covered by insurance, and I am honestly not sure if I’ll go back again for another round or if I’ll leave well enough alone. My fear is not that it won’t work, but that it can’t; that it’ll never be enough — I’ll never look how I want, I’ll never be satisfied, I’ll go through endless painful surgeries searching for something that isn’t possible and doesn’t exist. That is what it’s like to be a woman in our society: you may be beautiful, but you could always be more.
No one wants any of it to be true but we all know that for women, beauty is a double-edged sword. It’s trite to say but it seems like you really do need some of it for anyone to listen to you, but not too much of it or you won’t be taken seriously. It’s a delicate balance that we all eventually fail at because we all eventually become old. I want to be the kind of woman who truly and deeply believes that every line in my face represents a foundational moment and important relationship, that it illustrates the beautiful map of my hopefully long life. After all, the alternative to getting old is so much worse than getting old. And still, I do not want to look old. I am afraid of what it will mean for me. A woman who is not beautiful is invisible, and an invisible woman is an unheard woman. There is probably nothing I can do about how unfair that is.
I feel sheepish admitting what I want, which is just beauty without effort. Beauty without pain. Beauty without cost, emotional and material. Sometimes when I try to add up the cumulative hours I’ve spent on my physical appearance, I want to throw up; the number is almost infinite. But I can stop the clock now, or at least try. How many hours will I get back if I spend less time (and less money, and less energy) on the way that I look? And what will I gain as my beauty gradually recedes? I’ve long thought of getting uglier with age as a total loss, but maybe it’s more of a cost-benefit analysis. When we think about the people we love, their appearance is generally the least interesting thing about them. When they die, will we remember them for their looks? Or for how they drove us to our surgery and washed our hair when we couldn’t lift our arms? How they always paused for the tiniest second before laughing. How their arms felt wrapped around us. Maybe, if we stop focusing on our looks, we can make room for so much more.