Essay: Woman in the Botox chair

On softness and crow's feet

In the Botox office, there’s an anatomical chart of a woman’s face. The names for her wrinkles are both cute and depressing: bunny lines, cobblestone chin, tear troughs. I learn a new one: clinkles, for cleavage wrinkles. It sounds vaguely festive.

It’s my first appointment, and I get an injection in the elevens between my eyebrows, one at my crow’s feet and another to relax the mouth muscle in an effort to reduce my gummy smile. 

I first learned that I had a gummy smile from a man on the internet who told me that my gum-to-tooth ratio was appalling after we differed on whether or not Trump was a good president. Before that, I never knew that gums could be insulted. But as soon as he said it, I went to the mirror and suddenly hated what I saw.

At the time, I told my boyfriend that whenever I had enough money, I’d fix my smile. I’ll never forget how he pulled the car over, grabbed my knee and nearly cried: please don’t change your beautiful mouth.

Ironically, I still have a poem I wrote as a 25-year-old about how I literally wanted my face to look older. At the time, I lived in a rough neighborhood and was often hassled on the street. Daily, I was followed home from work, whistled, honked or howled at. Once, a man leaned out his pickup, tongue hanging like a dog, and filmed me from behind while biking. I used to fantasize about being older and having wrinkles and how maybe that would make men stop wanting to fuck with me so much. 

In high school, I had a badass lesbian teacher who was the first person to introduce me to Mary Oliver. She had a chipped front tooth and when I asked her why she never got it fixed, she shrugged and said: I guess I just like my face. At 17 years old, it had never occurred to me that a woman could have a flaw and not be desperate to fix it. That she possibly could even like it. 

That teacher was the first feminist I ever met and, for graduation, she bought me a moleskin journal and neatly copied in it an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese: 

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

In the botox chair 20 years later, I begin to cry thinking about what Mary might say: 

You do not have to worry about bunny lines or crow’s feet.

You do not have to crawl through the years repenting.

You can simply let your soft face be your face. 

After my botox appointment, I spend the rest of the day wondering if I had failed my first feminist teacher and Mary Oliver. Wondering if the women on the internet who read my poems would feel disappointed knowing I’m a woman still figuring out how to love her face and her body.  

Sometimes, my therapist and I talk about how there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism and no perfect feminism under patriarchy. Later, on a date, a man with a man bun tells me he’s a better feminist than I am because he’s into polyamory whereas I’m not. He’s also never gotten botox. 

I always tell my readers that I’m a poet, not a preacher. I can’t solve the problem, but I can aptly name the ache. It’s tricky being a woman. It’s tricky being anyone. In the mirror, I look at my face and try not to flinch. I try to see all of it—my laugh lines and tear troughs, my bunny lines and widow’s peak. That soft sunken spot on my left cheek where my lovers press their forehead and rest.

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I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments. ❤️

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Upcoming workshops + more

Instructions for Traveling West is coming next spring! 🏜️

My debut collection of poems will be out this coming April. The best way to support the book, my work, and, honestly, my heart is to preorder it now. Strong preorders signal to publishers and bookstores that they should invest in the author and means I have a better shot at writing a second one.

The Poetry Market ✨

You can now access a replay of my masterclass How to Write a Poem here. This workshop sold out the last two times it was offered but now you can purchase the replay. Watch here.

Sustenance Writing Community 🍊

My writing community, Sustenance, will be closing its doors once we reach 200 people, and moving to a waitlist. We have about 10 spots left. If you’d like to join us before doors close, you may do so here. 

November Sustenance Workshop W/ Poet

Danusha Laméris

❤️

Title: Writing Into the Unknown

Wednesday, November 15th, 5 - 6:30pm PST

$40 (limited outside tickets available, free to Sustenance members)

Writing is a way of knowing. It asks us to examine memory, certainty, and the possibility of revelation. In this workshop, we'll explore how to use the pivots of gesture to complicate our work, layer certainty with uncertainty, knowing with not-knowing.

Let's learn how to engage ourselves and our readers by unraveling what we've just said, asking a question, correcting ourselves. All right there on the page. You'll see how this brings work to life and can lead us to our own epiphanies. While I will be sharing sample work from poems, this can be applied to poetry and prose. We'll have time for a writing prompt as well as a Q and A.

As the days darken, let's delve into the rich darkness of the unknown together.