I recently found myself uptown, at a fancy plastic surgeon’s office, asking if I should have an upper blepharoplasty. That’s where they trim the excess skin off your eyelid so it doesn’t sag down over your pupil, making you look like a bullmastiff. My mother always warned that as I grew older, my lids would be the first things to fall. And trimming my blephs was something I’d anticipated tackling head-on, or, rather, eyes open, with a light anesthetic when I hit 40. Now, at 43, I felt like a radical for having waited so long. I grew up with a fitness-obsessed father and a Malibu Barbie mom who’d prioritized their youth and beauty above all else. There was never any stigma around getting “work” done or killing themselves in the gym for a six-pack. Maintaining my physical appearance has always seemed obligatory, something I had to put effort into if I wanted to succeed at life and remain my father’s favorite.
My first brush with fame was a newspaper article in The Arizona Republic at 6 months old, where my marathon-runner parents proudly described how they had me eating a low-protein diet and doing baby calisthenics to set me up for future success. I think there was even a photo of me doing an army crawl.
Despite my predetermined destiny,I’ve tried to be thoughtful about my approach to aging, not because I’m any less vain than my parents but because I know that regardless of my choice in skincare, eventually even Malibu Barbies turn into California Raisins.
I don’t want to grow old. Nobody does. But there is no getting out of here alive. Like adorable little chicks on a conveyor belt heading toward a high-speed grinder, we all end up somebody else’s collagen cream. So do we nip it, tuck it, or just say,“Fuck it”? Perhaps the only way to win is to savor the present instead of longing for the past. Time stands still for no one.
“I guess I’d just love to look frozen in time. But, like, frozen four years ago,” I told the nurse doing my intake. I shrugged.
“Have you had any other surgeries?” She looked at me, dubious.
“No.” I shook my head, omitting the breast augmentation I had at 22, the lower blepharoplasty I had at 28, and the breast lift I had at 41. It wasn’t that I wanted her to think my boobs were real. It was more that her questions felt irrelevant and like information that could be used against me at a later date.
The truth was that I’d been tweaking since the early aughts, and I had no plans to stop. While my goal wasn’t to look like a sexy baby, I wouldn’t have minded being mistaken for that baby’s au pair. After several more minutes of cat and mouse, where she tricked me into revealing my two C-sections and an impacted wisdom tooth removal, the nurse asked me to stand up so that she could take several digital photographs of my face.
“The doctor will be in shortly,” she said straight to my boobs, to let me know she’d already figured out that they were fake.
The doctor, a salt-and-peppered man in his 50s with a cherubic face and wide-set eyes, entered the room, plopped himself down on a swivel chair next to me, and asked what I thought was wrong with my eyes. I admitted that I wasn’t entirely sure but wanted his opinion nonetheless.
I explained to him that several of my girlfriends had recently been in for the same procedure, mentioning their full names just to have that awkward back and forth where he pretends not to know who I’m talking about and I keep assuring him that he can drop the act.
“Kelly Gervich, she literally asked if she could drive me here,” I doubled down.
After reminding me a few more times of his doctor-patient confidentiality clause, he looked at me kindly, then told me to get the fuck out of his office.
“Is this about Kelly?” I asked. “I know she can be polarizing.”
He shook his head. “You don’t need your eyes done. You’d be crazy to start messing with your face, and if you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
“Is that all?” I laughed.
“You know who you look like? My high school girlfriend.”
“Currently?” I gulped, certain he was at least 10 years older than me.
“Not currently. I just mean you have that girl-next-door thing. You’re natural,” he said, glancing at my form to double check. “But you are also the kind of person who ends up making a huge mistake with her looks. Somebody is gonna get in your head, and you’re gonna end up doing something you can’t reverse.”
I felt like I was 37 again and back in Hong Kong, where a fortune teller read my face and prophesized that I’d work my entire life but never make any money. I remember pleading with my translator to inform the reader that he wasn’t seeing the real me. Any line worth reading on my forehead had been frozen with Botox.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid,”I promised him as he stood to go.
“I’ll tell you when it’s time to cut. But just remember that once you start, you can’t go back.”
The door slammed shut as his words fell heavy on my moderately sagging eyelids. I wondered if I’d have the ego strength to heed his advice, or if I’d succumb to my preordained fate and do something I’d later regret.
In a society where youth has always been a currency, we are all tragic heroes fighting against insurmountable odds.
Our grandparents aged gracefully not because they lacked vanity but because the only thing they could use to hold up their faces was tape. Back then, a person’s wellness routine was simply an apple a day...followed by a T-bone steak and seven packs of cigarettes.
Today, our choices are endless. Potions and procedures promising not just pre-pubescent pores but photoshopped perfection accost us at every turn. Social media has given us the power to create the mythology of our own aging: With the swipe of a finger, we can filter out our flaws, cinch our waists, contour our cheekbones, and stay looking forever 21. But trying to embody this unrealistic beauty standard is as absurd as trying to fit into a too-tight piece of fast fashion.
I don’t want to look like Madonna! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life desperately seeking surgery or hear people say, “Who’s that girl?” when I walk past. I just want to wear spaghetti straps without a bra; I want to get warnings instead of speeding tickets; I want people to fall out of their chairs when they learn that I’m a mother of two; and I want my Barry’s boot camp instructor to straddle me when I’m doing a bench press. I want the respect of being over 40 but the power of being under 30. I want it all, the way every Hollywood rom-com promises. I want to be a mother of three, but also the CEO of my own company. A woman who has time for dry brushing and pedicures and date nights with her Armani-model husband who gets an erection the second she walks in the room.
I spent the best years my body will ever see in a velour tracksuit, only to reach my 40s and learn that black-tie now means a bikini covered in full-length fishnet. It’s not fair. But despite the surgeries, facials, lasers, and fillers, nothing has changed the way I feel about being older. It’s both bittersweet and infuriating.
I always dreamed of a day when my son would be embarrassed his friends considered me hot, but that’s not something any surgeon can provide. That only happens when you have babies at 15. I’m starting to accept that no matter what I do to myself at 43, my body will still turn 44, even if my implants are under 18!
As the people around us start looking more and more like their iPhone Memojis, perhaps the biggest act of rebellion is to do nothing. But I’m too big a narcissist for that. What we need as a culture is group therapy and transparency, people talking about how maddening it feels to be out of control. We need to fill our world with sticky notes reminding us what is real. Regardless of your current age, you are never going to be younger than you are right now. See, you just aged a second. So stop deleting pictures of yourself that you don’t like, because 10 years from now, even a bad pic of you is a good one.
And while you’re at it, stop beating yourself up for being human. Life is happening. And unlike your forehead, you can’t make it stand still.
