episode 262: do you need to “fix” your face?
This week I’m talking about something that’s been sitting heavy with me:
the quiet pressure for women to fix their faces as they age — and what happens when you don’t.
I’m not talking about skincare and makeup.
I’m talking about injections, lasers, facelifts, and the growing reality that it’s getting harder and harder to see women in their 40s, 50s, and beyond who haven’t invasively altered their faces — especially online.
I talk about:
* Why this feels eerily similar to growing up with zero body-size diversity
* How comparison gets warped when you’re looking at untouched faces vs. touched faces
* The isolation that can creep in when you’re choosing not to participate (or can’t)
* And why visibility actually matters more than we want to admit
This isn’t about judgment.
It’s about naming the pressure, the privilege, and the very real mental toll of where we are — and making space for women who are opting out, quietly wondering if they’re the only ones.
If you’ve ever looked in the mirror and thought, Is something wrong with me for not fixing this? This episode is for you.
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262
[00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Diet Diaries. I'm doing a total pivot today. I had planned to come on for today's episode, which is gonna air on Monday, February 9th, and talk about trigger foods because I've been getting a lot, a lot of questions from people about that, and I am gonna do that. But today I am not in the mood.
Today, I really am just kind of in my head about some stuff in terms of like body image and appearance. Um, not even so much about weight, although I'll probably end talking about that, but a lot about like our faces. And I just shared, I just filmed and shared something on social media because it was, I saw something that just kind of like not activated me, but as I've been getting activated by this and I wanted to share it, and I'm like, you know what?
I'm just gonna go talk about this on the podcast. Um, and what I really wanna talk about, and this is not new, I've talked about this before. But what I really wanna talk about this in the context of is representation and visibility [00:01:00] for women who are making the choice or maybe financially don't even have a choice and just can't do these things because all of this comes with financial privilege, um, to not kind of like physically alter their faces with injections, lasers, plastic surgery, all that stuff.
I'm not talking about makeup. I'm not talking about like creams and all that stuff. I'm talking about invasive procedures, right? If you put a needle in your face, it's invasive. Um, and again, I always say this, I had a nose job when I was 16. I always, always share that. I'm very, very open about it. Um, and I share about it.
One, because I wanna be completely transparent, and two, because I did that when I was 16. Um, and it was the years after that where all of my really, really hard body image issues started, right? So I share that to say that we think that physically altering our appearance is gonna be the thing that's gonna fix everything and make things better.
And it is not, um, it can change things, but it is very often a bandaid and without the internal work to deal with [00:02:00] how you feel about how you look continuing to change, it will. Not really change anything. It will change how you look, but will not change how you feel about how you look. Um, and basically I wanted, I, I, I shared this.
I went and just spoke about this on social media for a couple minutes, two minutes. And it's so weird that my algorithm is like this, right? Um, I think I should start with this. I started following maybe six months ago, a woman on Instagram named Mrs. Derm. And she is a wife of a dermatologist. They live in New Orleans.
Um, and she somehow over the years, has kind of taken on this role of doing consultations for, I think her husband's patients or women who are, it's almost kind of like a coach. She's like, she, I think she helps women kind of figure out what procedures or what products they are kind of quote unquote eligible for.
Um, she's not a doctor. She hasn't claimed to be a doctor or anything, and I have found some of what she shared to be really interesting and helpful. She talks a lot [00:03:00] about Retin A, which is the generic name is Tretinoin and about the way that really helps your skin. And I use that. I've used it for years.
Um, and I do think it has actually helped my skin in terms of, it doesn't help with lines or wrinkles or anything like that. It helps with like cellular turnover. Um, and she talks about moisturizers. She talks about not spending tons and tons of money on expensive skincare products. She talks about not needing a nine step routine and all this stuff, and so some of what she shares has been really helpful and some of what she shares has been very, very triggering.
She has had a lot of plastic surgery. She's had a tummy tuck, she's had liposuction on her thighs. She's had, um, an eyebrow lift. She's had a, a blepharoplasty and she just recently had a facelift and she's very open about it. She talks, I mean, she's basically her whole, not her whole platform, but she talks a lot about it.
She's very pro. Do whatever you want to do to change your appearance to like how you look and I am not here. I really actually don't, I don't, I don't even like wanna get into that. [00:04:00] Um, I said this in the real, I do think there's a tremendous amount of space for reflection as to why women feel this pressure and men do not.
Yes. Do men feel some pressure? Of course. But if you look at, I would, j Danny and I were watching the movie j Kelly, which is a newer George Clooney movie. I think it might've been like towards the end of last year. And I'm watching George Clooney and I don't know if he's had anything done to his face or not, but I will say that he quote unquote, looks his age right.
Um, and I'm like, God, he looks pheno. He's so good looking. I find him to be very good looking in this kind of classically kind of old Hollywood sort of way. And I'm looking at the lines on his face and I'm looking at his gray hair and I'm looking at the dark circles under his eyes and I'm like, I'm noticing it.
Not in a critical way, but in a. Comparing to a woman of his age kind of way, and the pressure and expectations that are on a woman, especially a woman in Hollywood of his age, to fix all of that. To get rid of it. And oh my God, it's so fucking unfair. It's so fucking unfair that we, and I think we all [00:05:00] collectively feel this way, that I think we, we all feel that men tend to look better with age.
And we feel that women look worse with age. Right? I think that is the collective opinion that we have. Somehow, I don't know whether we actually really believe that or we've, we've been taught to believe that, right? I shouldn't say, I don't know. We've been taught to believe that, right? It is so deeply ingrained from the moment that we are basically born that we don't even have a chance to know otherwise, right?
It becomes as simple to us as like grass is green and the sky is blue. And I just started to get so frustrated with it. And that's just like a little, just something I've just been thinking about. Um, you know, when thinking about all the women in Hollywood who are doing things that we don't even know about.
Right. And there was all this criticism around Mandy Moore a couple of months ago 'cause her face started to look different and there's all these people speculating that Mo Stone had a facelift. Right. And Chris Jenner has been very open about all the plastic surgery that she's had. And we know all the Kardashians Right.
Have done everything under the sun. And they have been, I think, pretty [00:06:00] open about it more recently. Um, but this woman, this woman, Mrs. Stern, her name is, uh, Melissa Coleman, and I actually bought a skincare product from her. I'll be totally transparent. It's a cream. And, um, it has definitely lightened a lot of like my sun spots.
Um, a lot of women use it for melasma, um, and different types of skin markings. It doesn't help with scarring, it doesn't help with redness, but if you have kind of pigment changes from certain conditions, right? Sun spots are very normal with age. It has definitely lightened them. It has not gotten rid of them.
It has not resurfaced my skin. My, the texture of my skin definitely feels smoother. And this is just a cream, I use it at night. That's it. Um. And so that to me is not like, that's not invasive, right? That stuff, makeup, and we can talk about how we use makeup. That's, that's really separate what I once, what I wanted to talk about, right?
So this woman, so I started following her. I went a little bit on this tangent, but I'm coming back to it now. I found her because I think a couple of other influencers that I follow talked about this [00:07:00] cream that she and her husband had developed called, it's called the Coleman Compound. And that was how I found her.
And I started following her and I ended up buying the cream after like spending a couple months thinking about it. I bought it and it has worked. It has done what she says that it does. And I was more curious. I didn't have a huge issue with my spots. I'm like, oh, you know, it was not, it was $150, which. We can get into this is gonna, that's gonna be a lot for some people and not a lot for others.
I'm not here to debate that right now. Um, that was something that I was willing to spend and it lasts like six months will last a really long time. And I'm like, okay, I'm curious. I'm, I'm willing to try this and it has made a difference. And I'm like, okay, fine. And I wasn't someone who was wearing like, tons of foundation to cover this up before.
I really don't wear foundation very rarely. Um, I'll do concealer and that kind of stuff. But anyway, just a little bit of backstory. So then I've been following her and so she just had this facelift, right? And before she had the facelift, I remember looking at her and being like. What? What are you lifting?
Like literally she looks 25, 30 and she's 47. She's 47, 48. She's a couple years older than me, and she just [00:08:00] this morning shared her, but she's been like three or four weeks since the facelift. And she shared her before and after photos. And she said in the caption, she was like, you probably are not gonna see a ton of change from a lot of angles.
And she talks about, she was like, you know, she leaned down and so she's like. Part one of her before and afters was like her double chin picture, like looking down and seeing the loose skin from when she would look down and now post facelifts, she looks down and there's basically nothing there from the front and from the side.
Those are her before and after pictures. And I'm like, wow, that's, that's intense, right? That you're having a facelift so that you don't have a double chin when you look down, when we basically all have a double chin when we look down, no different than like, I don't know, when you sit down, your thighs are gonna spread, right?
It just like happens. It's just like the skin has to move. Um, but again, like she. Has her own stuff. She's lived her own life and I'm not here to, I'm not in this podcast judging her for doing that. This is more about an observation, right? [00:09:00] So I've been following her and I have noticed been noticing. Some of her content, 'cause then she'll do like AMAs ask me anything and women will be asking questions and all these women are asking questions about like plastic surgery and who should I see and what should I get and when am I a candidate for a facelift and should I get, what laser should I get and what injection should I get and what works?
And she's giving recommendations, fine, look, whatever. And I'm like, oh my God, all these women are out here like doing these things to their faces. And yes, it's a, it becomes a, um, the community becomes an echo chamber, right? She attracts people who are interested in these things. I'm not saying that the people who follow her are representative of like the general population, but there is a feeling on social media, um, and.
Maybe I'm getting this stuff because I follow her. She's the only person really that I follow kind of in that category, but other influencers I follow. Like another girl, I follow this woman, Brittany Sansone, who I've talked about who's had a tummy tuck. And I love her style. I love her clothing style and that's why I follow her.
I've learned a lot from her even though she's, I would call her more of like an [00:10:00] influencer creator than stylist 'cause she doesn't actually offer styling services. Again, separate topic. Um, she posted over the weekend about like talking about her lip filler and the doctor that she goes to, to do all of her stuff.
She's done CO2 lasers, she does Botox and filler and all kinds of things. And I don't know if it's showing up right because the algorithm picks up that she's talking about that even though I don't follow her for that content. But again, like I see her, I followed her for one reason, and then I see her talking about this other stuff and I'm like, oh, it does, it's like it's triggering in a way.
And I mean, now I'm gonna circle back to what I said. My original reason for doing this episode was, was because it's about visibility and representation, and I feel like it is getting harder and harder to see a woman of my age or older, often even younger, right? Because women are starting to do this stuff very, very young now who have not done these things to their face.
And you don't, in most cases, you don't know when someone has done something to their face. So then you see what they look like, and then you're comparing your, I'll call it like untouched face to their touched face. [00:11:00] And you're like, oh my God, what's wrong with me? And then you start to feel like you look worse because everyone else is quote unquote, and I say this, I use this for lack of better term better.
And that's hard. Right, because if everyone starts to change the way their face looks and they now no longer again, quote unquote, look their age, they look 10, 15 years younger, but you aren't, and you look maybe more of your age, you also start to think that you look worse. And so to me, this is not unlike.
The conversation around visibility and representation for different body sizes, right? That we got. So used to seeing a size two, a size four, maybe a size six, as the idealized size for a woman in media growing up, right? I'm a kid of the eighties and nineties, right? So I grew up with, you know, 17 Magazine and YM and Sassy and all the shit.
And as did many of you, and I know many of you who listen are 10, 15, 20 years older than me, and I know I have some younger listeners as well. Right, but we grew up, right? We [00:12:00] know this is the body type that's idealized, right? And now when I was 18 in my, certainly in my teens, twenties, I would even say like in my thirties, this was not as much of a thing as it is now.
I would say in the last five years this has really exploded. Meaning in terms of how many women or the feeling it is of how many women are changing their face with injections, lasers, and plastic surgery. And so now it's like the, the standard of what is attractive is changing. It much in the same way that that happened.
It, it happened really kind of like in, in the thirties and forties in, in Hollywood when the, you know, kind of the, the aesthetic for a woman's body was sort of established in terms of modern times and yes, and it's fluctuated over the years, but a woman in a size who takes a size 16, 18, 20, has never been an idealized body size.
Right. So there's been over the years this. Complete lack of representation and visibility for women that aren't, that don't fit that ideal. And I [00:13:00] feel like that is now happening more and more for women in terms of, of their faces and women who are 40, 45, 50, 55 plus, and who have not touched their face. So they have lines, they have wrinkles, they have hollows, and you know, fat loss, fat gain, and all the things that change the shape of your face and impact your appearance over time.
Right. I think more and more women are changing that and trying to fit a certain look, and so there's less visibility and less representation of women who haven't, and I think it's starting to cause a problem much in the same way that not having visibility of women who are above a certain size, basically a size six, my entire life totally fucked me up.
Right? Where it's like quote unquote Fat Monica on friends. That I watched from the age of 14 to the age of 24 and would see her, and now when I've watched it back as a 40 something year old, I'm like, she's basically a size 14. But I internalized that as being fat, and that was basically, I. I go, you guys know I've taken a size [00:14:00] 1214 basically since I was like 17, 18 years old.
Me being the last time I really wore a 10 when I was like 15. Um, right. So I internalized that at a very young age as, oh, that's the wrong way to look. That is the wrong way to look. I can't look like that. And absolutely that fed a lot of my issues. And then it was like, oh, Jennifer Anderson and her body and, and Monica and her skinny Monica.
That's what was hot. That's what got them men. That's what got them dates. That's what got them compliments. Right. There was no visibility for women in bodies above a certain size. And if there was, it was in a totally negative light. Right. Exactly. Like, like quote unquote Fat Monica and friends. And I'm telling you, this is it.
History is repeating itself now, but with women's faces. And I want there to be more visibility for women who are not touching their faces. And again, this is not about judgment. This is about visibility and representation, [00:15:00] right? I am not here because I know I understand the pressure, I understand the expectations.
I understand how hard it is to look in the mirror and see things. I look in the mirror every day and I see things about my face that I don't like. Right now, I've had this darkness start to form kind of on the outside of my left eye. You know, our eyelids always tend to be darker, but I feel like that darkness is now kind of like, it's like, um, morphing towards like the outside almost like it looks like I have eye shadow on, but I don't.
I'm like, what is that? Why is it happening? I'm very fixated on it. I'm like, there's really nothing I can do about it except cover up with makeup, which sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. Right. But I have my yellow teeth, which I cannot whiten because I've lost a lot of enamel for dental issues, right?
I have all kinds of lines in my forehead. I've never had a visible jawline. Like I basically have a double chin all of the time. Um, there's so many things I see with my face that are quote unquote wrong or bad, and I, I'm not even gonna, I choose not to change them. Um, and I think it's that. I'm not even gonna talk about why.
That's really [00:16:00] not what this is about. And I'm not doing this to give visibil visibility for visibility's sake. I'm doing it because choosing not to change those things is completely in align with my values. I'm not doing it just for like a cause or to get up on my soapbox and be like, look, I'm not changing this stuff.
Like that's not why I'm doing it. I'm doing it because changing it would feel out of alignment would make me feel not like me. That's really the only way I can explain it. I would feel like not like myself. Um, and I just totally lost my train of thought. I, I want women, there's a, uh, I want women to see other women that look like them.
There is nothing that feels better than seeing a woman your age that looks like you in a position of visibility. There's just not. Um, this is, you know, people speak about this in terms of like. Of, of race and seeing, like, you know, I've heard black women speak many times about seeing black women in positions of, of, of power and stature and [00:17:00] influence.
Right. And how important that is. Um, and. You know, it's just like women who are in bigger bodies seeing women in bigger bodies in media and modeling on runways and fashion and movies, right? This is the same thing, seeing women who have lines and spots and yellow teeth and sagging jowls and all of this stuff on their face.
Seeing visibility of that, and we are seeing less and less of it. It. There's a photograph that I saw of Kristy Turlington who I, you know, and then when the supermodel thing was a thing in like the nineties, she was actually my favorite. I just think her, I think she's gorgeous. And this photo I saw of her, I was like, wow, it looks like she hasn't really done anything to her face.
She had a lot of lines and wrinkles, and she looked exactly like her just with lines on her face. And I was trying to, I actually wanted to write about it last week, and I couldn't find. I don't know where it is, where the picture is. I dunno if I saved it on Instagram. Maybe it's an Instagram. I thought it was an article, but it might be an Instagram.
I'm gonna see if I can link it, and I was like, oh my God, [00:18:00] thank you. I wanted to thank her. I wanted to give her a hug. And whenever I see women. I was just watching on Instagram. Um, I, I've been getting a lot more makeup content served to me. I love watching. You guys know, I talk about makeup, I love makeup and, um, Nikki LaRose is a makeup artist that I follow to learn a lot from who she just turned 40.
She talks about it. She's done a ton of like injections and stuff to her face. Her skin on camera looks like a 17 year old's. I mean, there's not a single line on her face. It's visible to me. There probably is in real life. Um, because remember that lighting and not saying she's using filters, but certainly makeup and lighting and angles and all that stuff can really warp what you see.
Right. I'm just gonna remind you of that, that what you see on social media and what someone looks like, right? So yes, let's say they have done Botox or filler or lasers, whatever they've done. But then on top of that, the lighting, the angles, the uh, the composition, the framing of the shot, that all then [00:19:00] again impacts what you see.
And then you're comparing your kind of untouched face to not only their touched face, but then their manipulated face through the camera lens. And it's like we are literally. Comparing apples to oranges, uh, not even apples to oranges. You are comparing apples to like dogs. And looking at Joey sitting over here, you're comparing things that are so not even in the same league as each other.
And then what are, what are the, what are the implications of that for our mental wellbeing and our mental health and the decisions that we make? Um, but anyway, this photograph of, I just talked about Christy Turlington. I got this video of the makeup artist, uh, Patty Dub Broth, who's very famous. She has makeup for Hollywood, and I'm like, wow.
She's in a little bit of a bigger body. She has. You know, long gray hair lines all over her face, jowls, you know, loose skin in her neck, the whole thing. I don't know if she's done any work. It doesn't look like she's done any work. And I'm like, wow, that's fucking awesome. She works in Hollywood. She's a makeup artist for [00:20:00] celebrities.
She hasn't visibly touched herself in a way that would look like she's drastically altered her appearance. And I'm like, I fucking love you. Thank you. I feel such gratitude for these women. Who are making these choices, because I feel seen, it makes me feel not alone. It makes me feel like, okay, I can do this.
Right. There's power and strength in numbers, and so that's really what I wanted to talk about today was giving visibility and representation to women who are making the choice not to change their faces. Or maybe they're making really, really small changes. Like I know I have friends and I know people who've done like a little bit of Botox and didn't like it or have like, there's one thing on their face that's driven them nuts, but there's other things that they could easily that you can see like, oh yeah, I could see what you mean.
Like whether it's like a sagging eyelid or like js or things, and they're choosing not to do that, right? It's like, I think part of it is, it's so easy to, there's, there's a way to fix everything now, right? You can literally fix everything. [00:21:00] That you don't like about your appearance from your weight in terms of, you know, GLP ones, plastic surgery, injections.
You can literally physically transform yourself and make yourself look the way that you think you want to look, which is based on the way that you've been told you need to look. I'm never gonna not say that, and to me, that's where the space for reflection is. Why am I doing this and can I, where's my capacity to sit in the discomfort of some of this?
I talked about that in another episode, but I think when it's so easy, when there's so many things available to fix it. It becomes, why not? Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I do that? Right. And again, that's not really like where I wanna go because I understand the lore of that. I understand the lore of that in terms of like some of the shopping stuff that I talked about a couple weeks ago, or maybe that was last week, I can't even remember.
But again, I, and look. I have no plans to do anything to my face. Can I tell you that for the rest of my life, I'm never going to, no. 'cause I can't predict the future, but I'm gonna be 40, 46 in July and I have no plans to do anything. [00:22:00] And even when I do, I promise I'll be transparent about it. I promise I'll share it with you.
Um, just like I shared that cream that I bought and I used that. Um. Because I think that that's so important. But I really like, I want you to know if you're someone who's struggling with this, if you're like, should I get Botox? Should I not? Or you have and you love it, or you have and you don't. I guess really.
I really, if you have and you love it, great. Like again, like you do, you. I'm happy for you. We all have a lot of shit to deal with and we all have to make choices about what discomfort we are willing and able to tolerate. And so I get that and part of me feels like there have been times when I've talked about this or maybe I've been.
A little harsh, I can admit that. But this is really for the women who are making a choice not to do this, whether it's an, it's an active, proactive choice or it's kind of a reactive choice and they can't afford it, right? This shit is fucking expensive. Okay. Right. So let's, there's that whole piece of it, right?
This comes with extreme [00:23:00] financial privilege to be able to afford to do any of this. Um, so. I want you to know that you're not alone. I want you to know that you're not alone in feeling left out or maybe left behind, or feeling maybe less pretty or less attractive, and feeling like, should I do these things?
Do I need to do these things? And no, you don't, and you're not alone. And I know that I'm not. I know I'm not the only one, and I'm hoping that if you are. Making this choice and in this position that you'll reach out and share. Um, because I think it, it will help you. It will help me, and it will help all the women that are listening because I would maybe like compile all of that into like an email or talk about on another podcast.
And it can be anonymous, right? I'm not trying to expose anyone, but there is strength and power in numbers. And my feeling is that it's getting harder and harder to see women who haven't touched their faces and. It feels hard and it feels scary sometimes, and it feels unsettling and [00:24:00] it feels isolating.
And so that's really what what I wanted to talk about is starting to break some of that down and, uh, kind of call out the elephant in the room around that, that you can feel isolated. You can feel scared, you can feel worried. You can feel intimidated. You can feel pressured. You can feel all those things because I sometimes feel those things too.
And you can also know that that's not a reason to do something. You don't have to then do something because of that, because you feel like you're the only one, or that you don't see faces like yours anymore. And so you're wondering if you're, if you're even pretty or attractive anymore. You are. You are, you are, you are.
And I feel like there's more that I wanna say than the ideas kind of aren't fully forming themselves right now, but.
Having visibility and representation for women in bigger bodies over the last 10 to 15 years has been amazing. And there's been a shift in that recently, um, with the rise of the GLP one meds. And this is not a criticism of those [00:25:00] medications. You absolutely know that I have clients on them. I fully support them for people who need them.
I do think they're being misused by a lot of people. But we cannot deny that there has been a huge trend in seeing more and more smaller bodies. And that's, that can be really hard. Um, just like there's a trend in seeing more and more faces of women at, at getting older and older. Older. I mean, I talked about the Martha Stewart thing.
When was that? I, that I did a whole episode about that. Right. That she. Posted a picture of herself. She's 84. She literally looked, like I said, she looked 24, maybe she looked 34. She looked 40, 50 plus years younger than she is. What does that mean? What does that feel like to see that It's not easy. It's hard.
It makes you question everything, and so having more visibility and representation for faces. At all different ages that have not been touched, I think is essential. It is essential. It is essential for the wellbeing of women, for the future of women, for the the little girls that we are raising. For the little boys that we are [00:26:00] raising what they see and what they become conditioned to seeing, right?
We become conditioned to seeing these things. That's why we feel the way we feel about body size and shape, because we were conditioned to seeing one body from the moment we were born. And if you don't think this is true, you are living on another planet. Right. Like you see a fucking Barbie. You pick up a Barbie and you watch shows like friends, and you are conditioned to think that you don't realize it's happening, but it's happening and it happens to, to boys and to girls.
It happens to all people. Um, and. So I want to just give voice to this, and this is something I've been thinking about a lot because of the amount of content that I've been being fed, because it shows up in the content of people that I'm not following for those reasons. So it's being put in front of me, even when I don't necessarily want it to be put in front of me.
It's kinda unavoidable, and we have to learn to live with that, right? We can't just. Shut things off at every turn. Yes, you can certainly curate your social media experience, and I fully advocate that. And also you're gonna see stuff and we need [00:27:00] to be prepared to see those things and how we're gonna respond and react.
So I think this really gets to what I wanted to say. I would, I would love to hear from you on this. I say that with every episode and I truly mean it, but maybe more than ever, I would really, really love to hear from you on this. Um. Hear your thoughts, hear your experiences. If you are someone who's chosen not to do anything to your face or you you want to, but you can't or whatever it is, I would really love to hear from you.
Um, again, there's strength in power in numbers, and I think that we can create our own visibility in our own representation within our little community, and then maybe we can start spreading that farther and wider. And that's really what this is about. So thank you so much for listening, and I'll be back next week planning to talk about trigger foods.