To Botox Or Not to Botox? That is One of the Questions…

My older sisters wrestled with this one for months.

Left-to East Coast phone calls would have paid for at least a session or two, but damn, when I saw them (they live in the same city) they looked great. Six and four years older than I, respectively, I didn’t need to make a mental note. It was in every faint line on my forehead.

My forehead was fine. I didn’t ‘emote’ there I guess. The spot between my eyes? Check. I could put it off. But Keri said, softly, the “nasal-labial folds” (I think that’s what it is called) was another matter entirely.

“It’s a Restylane emergency,”my sister Rebecca said flatly.

Their pockets are deeper than mine and I have kids and huge orthodontia bills.

“You want to remarry?” Keri cut to the chase.

Rebecca was a little more focused. “There’s so much competition out there.”

I see. I saw. In front of a mirror – well-lit and mean-spirited. And flanked by two well-meaning sisters.

Two crisp hundred dollar bills emerged from Keri’s $92 bra (she found it necessary to mention this.) Rebecca wrote a check, to a doctor, with whom I already had an appointment.

To Botox or not to Botox was a question. Restylane was a need, a given, a mandate and precisely what stood between me and my future husband.

I went. It did not hurt. I am now addicted to both Botox and Restylane. As the doctor says, there is no way that you have to look starched and arched and stretched. You simply continue to look the way you look now. A provocative notion. But honest? Haven’t I earned my wrinkles? Aren’t they beautiful in the way my white stripe of hair, striking against my dark, deep chocolate mane?,

I asked these questions of Keri and Rebecca. “Oh please, Soph, really,” they said in unison, almost in harmony, during a three-way call.

I admit it. It makes you feel stronger. You glow a little. You take off at least five years.

It goes against almost ALL of my generally held principles, but as my 12 year old says,

“you are the youngest looking mom of all my friends.”

You can’t beat that. Future husband or not…