It started with a cancelled Botox appointment.
Not because I didn’t want those tiny pinpricks in my forehead and their promise of youth, but because the spa I go to is an hour away on a good day (in LA traffic there are none of those), and my husband was out of town. I’ll do pretty much anything to avoid having to drive myself somewhere, so I rescheduled it for a few weeks later.
But then a-few-weeks-later came.
And with it, a whisper.
“What if you just didn’t go?”
I’d recently had a hair appointment with a significant price tag, so I convinced myself the responsible thing to do would be to pause on the Botox investment until the credit card had a bit more breathing room.
Only this time, I hit a different button.
Hand hovering between “reschedule” and “cancel,” I found myself coyly tapping the latter.
A week later, I stopped wearing most of my makeup, too.
This decision was fuelled by a curiosity that had been brewing below the surface for months. I had spiralled into the depths of the anti-aging rhetoric, losing time reading articles about how the beauty industry gave us all skin dysmorphia and convinced us that we’re hideous without the the glossy porelessness of a variety of baked goods.
In December, when I set forth to create a vision board for my next season of self, I’d pinned women in their 40s and 50s, feeling expanded by the idea of living a long, indulgent, joyful life. Even before I cancelled the appointment, I was starting to wonder if maybe it would actually be a gift to get to wear wisdom on my skin.
I’m turning 34 next month and I genuinely have no idea if “I look my age,” because the majority of 34 year-olds I’m exposed to (including my own reflection) have either had some amount of work done, or at minimum, paint on a mask every morning.
I had become obsessed with preserving my youth, despite the fact that my youth is the exact shitshow I grew up to escape from.
I didn’t like being younger. I was an idiot. Life was impossible. I had a hangover every day for five years. My mom had to pick me up and take me grocery shopping so I wouldn’t survive off of popcorn exclusively. Yet the anti-aging narrative was encouraging me to stay there — stuck in an era that wasn’t even scratching the surface of what it means to be alive.
I’ve never once wished I could go back to that version of me, except when I was looking in the mirror.
I. STAGED REALITY
When I announced my no-makeup-mission to the world (because if I didn’t tell thousands of virtual friends, does it even count?) I was asked about the motivation behind it, to which I shared verbatim:
“I just want my skin to look like my skin, my face to look like my face, in this era, with this wisdom, with this experience.”
But I haven’t stopped wearing makeup entirely. Makeup has always been a medium of mine, and I find pleasure in the process of pruning myself. I’ve removed foundation and concealer from the rotation, and am cutting back on mascara. I’ve replaced my dark brow pomade with a gel that adds more subtle tint. I’ve continued to add a few extra freckles, topped with a dusting of bronzer and a swipe of blush.
It’s still my real face… I’m just styling it.
This incongruity brings up a familiar tension, one I navigate daily in my role as an internet person, creating at the intersection of aesthetic and authenticity. I have my “no-makeup-makeup” routine there, too — the ratty blanket I throw out of frame, the dog toys I kick under the table, the fake-writing in my journal as the camera rolls.
Reality. Ish.
Maybe it’s what actually happened, but it’s not the way it looked when it did.
“It’s still my real life, I’m just styling it.”
II. WHOLE TRUTH
At any given moment, I exist firmly in the duality of meticulous and messy.
As I type this, the coffee table in front of me is immaculately arranged, recently dusted, books aligned to the centre just-so. But to my right, the trash-can overfloweth. (It’s being held down by a cookbook so the dogs don’t get their noses in it, but it’s been raining all morning so I can’t be bothered to bag it up and bring it out to the bin). I’ll never forget a friend’s birthday but I won’t text them back for a month. I have a neurotic pre-travel ritual involving a Notion outfit database but I’ll gladly leave the packing ‘til a few hours before the flight. My bed is always made and the sheets are (obviously) linen, but hidden beneath is a drawer of unfolded sweaters and crumpled up bathing suits that I have no interest in organizing, like, ever.
But there is one area where I lean almost entirely in one direction, and it’s the part that people see most.
My strategic expertise and penchant for a digital planner pair with my photography skills to culminate in an online presence that screams put together.
Someone recently reflected that, “everything I do is so pretty and curated,” and asked, “are there aspects of your life that you let completely up to chance?”
Little do they know, I only own 4 pairs of undies.
My life isn’t always curated, but my eye never fails to make it look as though.
And so, we arrive at the tension:
Outside the 9:16 frame, there’s another side to the story.
What I show is the truth, but an incomplete one.
Isn’t a lie of omission a lie, just the same?
III. PERPETUATING THE PROBLEM
When I was deliberating Botox the first time around, I would scour the faces of my peers for fine lines. I wanted to be certain that either everyone was already doing it, or that my own aging was happening more quickly than the average person, making the investment inevitable. I called my mom a few months ago in search of some genetic explanation, asking her if she remembers a period of sudden and surprising overall drooping in her early 30s (she said no, which caused my panic to worsen). I texted a friend who moved out of LA a while ago and asked her if she looked younger now that she was living in cleaner air (she said maybe, which brought me peace). Every Zoom call pulled me into existentialism, wishing I could ask them if their cheeks had always been that tight.
I wanted to be affirmed in my not enough-ness. I wanted to feel foolish for keeping my real face.
We seek this same reverse-validation in our online worlds, too. We convince ourselves that we can’t create the content we covet because we don’t have the house, the products, the sunlight hitting our countertops at the right time of day. We find evidence that our existence just “isn’t aesthetic enough.” We don’t just envy those who can show up polished, every time — we believe that our reality is inherently wrong and spend thousands of dollars hide it, or we use it as an excuse not to show up at all.
As I’ve been reflecting in the role content plays in this cycle of unattainability, I’ve been asking people close to me what’s missing from my own.
In one reflection, I heard:
“Don’t show me curated Xanthe, I’m invested in her, I trust her. Show me the feral. That’s where I see myself.”
Like me, examining people’s smooth foreheads for a crack in the foundation:
They just want proof that it’s fake.
Deep down, we aren’t longing to sculpt our lifestyle to look more like the most prominent depiction of “living” we see on our screen — we’re looking for something that we already recognize.
It’s always been there, I just have to move the camera a few inches.
IV. HONOURING MY ART
It gets tricky when I remember that photo and video creation isn’t just how I share my life, it’s how I make my art. The process of planning, styling, and shooting an experience — the joy of editing it into the end result — makes my heart quicken. Whenever I write “joy lists,” it’s always at the top. I’m thinking back to an afternoon I spent on the Costa Brava last fall, slicing apricots in windowsills, tripod a few feet away. The work I created in that cottage is some of my proudest, immortalizing a trip that holds deep meaning to me. But are they even “memories,” if I manufactured them? I remember it now, but I also made it up.
Still, authentically, that’s how I experience the world.
Anytime I’ve tried to challenge myself with documenting a scene exactly as it is, I can physically feel my inspiration deflate. If I’m taking a photo without rearranging a few things and pinching the screen to shape the plot within it, then it may be my reality, but it’s not my art.
I’m no longer willing to pay $500 every 3 months to perpetuate a story that we lose value as we age, and I’m no longer willing to perpetuate an unattainable lifestyle through an online presence that is incomplete — but I won’t forsake my medium in the process, either.
Just like my makeup routine has be pared down but not abandoned entirely, I know there’s a middle ground wherein I can preserve my art without performing it.
Yes, those are my wrinkles.
No, those aren’t my freckles.
The lashes? Mine.
The brows? REFY.
Embracing what’s true in the moment, but taking a few artistic liberties along the way.
V. THE AESTHETIC MESS
It’s been 6 months since my last Botox appointment and four weeks without any foundation or concealer, but I feel more beautiful than ever because I feel like me.
In this process of unfreezing and unfiltering, I’ve been feeling called toward a code of conduct with my content, too. A botox-level boundary for my online-face — an effort to bring that me-ness into everything.
As I pursue this path of hiding less, I see a clear parallel between how I want to represent my face and how I want to represent my life:
When I decided to start hiding my wrinkles, it was to become more desirable — but when I stopped, I wasn’t surrendering to being less so. Instead, I was committing to seeing myself differently. To feeling desirable without it.
My art can be an invitation to see things differently, too.
Spilled coffee worthy of appreciating. Dirty laundry pile worthy of wanting.
Redefining desirability, entirely. Not in spite of, but because of.
The Aesthetic Mess.
𐄂𐄂
