I got botox, so what?

Growing up in my home, there was one definition of beauty, and that was natural beauty. The words were intertwined, inextricable. This worked well for the women in my family, they were tall and thin, with long thick hair and even olive skin. Enter me.

I’m not going to lie and say that I was an ugly child, because I wasn’t, I was an ugly teen. I was short and pleasantly plump, curly hair that I had no idea how to style (my friends lovingly referred to my hair as my frizz halo, I was ugly, but super nice), acne hit me hard, and braces would have been a great call. I did not fall into the beautiful category, and I knew that at 12.

Not only did I not fit the mold, but I loved all of the things I wasn’t supposed to. I was a fiend for beauty products, any beauty products. Nail polish? I’ll take one in every colour, makeup? Yes please, hair straightener? Bring on the sizzle. These products represented everything I lacked, but I couldn’t get enough. They were my guilty pleasure, my dirty little secret.

The shame that I carried around needing help to be beautiful went deep. I carried it from childhood to adulthood, a gentle simmer under the surface, guiding my choices and my opinions, The simmer came to a boil one month before I got married. I was obsessed with being natural at my wedding. In anticipation of the wedding, my stepmom wanted to get her hair done, we decided that it would be fun to go together, I could use a 2mm trim. When we got there, I decided that I would get a conditioning treatment to make my hair look healthy and shiny, innocent, natural, and that’s when it happened – lightener in the conditioning treatment. My hair was copper. I felt my world crashing down, sure I could get my hair dyed back to my original colour, but it wouldn’t be natural anymore. On my wedding day, I looked the same as I had always looked, no one knew that my hair was dyed, but I did.

Not being happy with your hair turning copper is fair, but having a full on crisis was not. This was incident one. Enter the virtual meeting. In the midst of pandemic, I turned 30 and despite my best efforts, so did my skin. The teeny tiny camera on my laptop became a spotlight, and all I could see was the ominous shadow, the tiny crater that had claimed its territory between my eyebrows. When I tell you this is all I could see, I mean this is all I could see. This is when someone suggested botox, cue gasp. How on earth could I get botox? That would be admitting once and for all that I was not naturally beautiful, might as well hand me my hammer so I could put that final nail in the coffin. Intense reaction eh? Yeah, I thought so to. I needed to take a step back and reevaluate the beauty standards that were engrained in me. It was time for me to drop the unrealistic standard that I knew and open my eyes to the fact that beauty does not come in one form. I got the botox, and guess what happened? I loved it and It made me feel really good.

I still love all things beauty. There is nothing like a good cream blush, I will never get tired of a shimmery eye shadow, and a new hair tool makes me giddy. It may seem superficial, but its fun, and it makes me feel good, and that’s the point. Do what makes you feel good, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, when you look in the mirror, that’s you, so get the makeup, curl you hair, and if you want to, get the damn botox. Write your own definition of beauty, and toss the others out like that dried up tube of mascara, she’s not serving you anymore.