Confession time!

I have been going back and forth on whether or not I was going to write about this topic for fear that I would be judged for it. But then I figured…this is my blog. I have never been anything short of completely honest on here and no topic is off limits. So without further ado…let the judging begin!

I think am fairly young looking. Most of the time when I tell people that I am almost 32 years old, they are very surprised. I’ve been misjudged as being a decade younger. This may or may not also have something to do with the fact that I am very loud and boisterous…or immature…whatever you want to call it. It’s not often that I find a gray hair and most of the fine lines on my face aren’t too noticeable yet. With the exception of my forehead.

I know most people have a part or several of their body that they really don’t like, and that’s one of mine (I can wear pants, but I certainly can’t walk around with a bag on my head all day).  It’s like someone took the forehead off of a much older person and slapped it on to my face. I blame it on many years of overly dramatic facial expressions.

You know the way your forehead wrinkles when you raise your eyebrows? Mine wrinkles really badly. And all this wrinkling has resulted in pretty deep horizontal lines that are visible all the time whether I’m rolling my eyes at you or not. Sometimes they are more noticeable than others, but they are always there.

I am going to come clean here and admit to photoshopping these lines out of almost every photo I’ve been in for the past several years. This is a handy talent, but it also makes me feel like a liar. Here is a completely undoctored picture, aside from the fact the word “dislike” with an arrow was not floating over my head in real life.

I know to a lot of people that it might not appear to be such a big deal, but when I look at myself in the mirror, I feel like Lieutenant Worf’s lovechild. I am very self conscious about it and have tried many things to mask the issue. I’ve wasted hundreds of dollars on various face products. Bangs only work for the first 5 minutes before I get sick of them and pull them back. And no matter how hard I try, it’s impossible for me to NOT make the dramatic facial expressions (what can I say…I’m all about drama). So that, along with the fact that my wedding is next week, is what led me to make my decision to finally do something about it.

I visited the medspa last Tuesday. Now I present to you…my makeover:

And right after the wedding, I will pursue my life dream of becoming a pop star.

SIKE!

But really I did get Botox and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

I realize that injecting botulism under your skin in order to paralyze part of your face sounds pretty gnarly and/or stupid, but in my mind the rewards outweighed the risks.

It seemed like a safe enough, non-permanent procedure that could really boost my confidence. So I consulted first with my mom, who is an RN and swears by it, and then with the specialist at the medspa, who assured me that it would give me the exact results I wanted.

She wasn’t kidding. I received a number of itty bitty not at all painful injections in my forehead and one in each eyebrow. Then I was done; in and out of the office in like 20 minutes and the results became visible almost immediately. The best part is that the specialist knew exactly what she was doing (hence “specialist”) and I don’t have that creepy frozen surprised look that people sometimes associate with Botox.

(completely undoctored photo)

I know that cosmetic procedures sometimes have a sort of stigma attached to them, which is why I was very wary of bringing any of this up in the first place. It’s not like I’m going to go all After School Special peer pressure and encourage everyone to run out and get Botox right now. But for me it has (at least temporarily) corrected a problem that I have worried over for years. Botulism or not, I think this stuff pretty much kicks ass, and I am relishing in the fact that I can smile without thinking about it all wedding long and won’t have to photoshop my face in any of our photos at the end of the day.

Now if I start talking about going to get collagen lip injections or a new ass, please feel free to stop me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Beauty, Botox, cosmetic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.