The further I disappear down the deep dark rabbit warren of beauty tweakmenting – the foreskin facials which lead to microneedling which leads to lasers and radio frequency- dependent lifting combos – the more seriously I deceive the person I can’t technically call my boyfriend anymore, not because he’s dumped me (he hasn’t), but because it’s unseemly after all these years, though I haven’t actually managed to come up with a more satisfactory status-title for him. (What do you call the bloke to whom you aren’t married, though you do live together, from whom you can’t realistically see yourself splitting any time soon? Anyone?) Anyway. Ages ago, he told me he’d leave me if I ever got any plastic surgery. He’d meant it in a nice way. I struggle with sincerity and also smugness, so it hurts to write this, but the fact is, that man’s never given a damn what I look like, never placed particular value on it, and has certainly never wanted me to worry about it to the point I’d willingly inflict pain upon myself / part with significant amounts of cash, to maintain it. Which is sweet. It just doesn’t entirely correspond with my own desire to look as good as I can for as long as I can. Actually: it conflicts with it. The end result of this has been: me, quite often lying to him, about where I’m going and why and what I’ve had done.
He’s quite easy to deceive on this level. He has a policy of never reading anything I write, which is how I get away with this (along with all those celeb interviews where I pretty much try and get off with my subject in the name of journalistic endeavour). The first time I got my eyebrows threaded, he thought I’d had a fringe-trim. The first time I got Botox, he said:
“New foundation?”
(Me: “Yup! Yup! New foundation! Yup!”)
I had to stop him brushing his teeth with my prescription retinol once; when he questioned me over skin tinged temporarily red by a chemical peel, I told him it was stubble burn from me kissing a bearded lover.
And so on.
It doesn’t feel good. I mean, I can try and reason myself out of it all I want with internal monologue arguments like: “he said no ‘plastic surgery’, as in: no face lifts or boob jobs or nose jobs or anything that requires a general anaesthetic and I haven’t done that (yet),” but the fact is, I know he’d be worried about the things I do do. Irritated and concerned. He’d start googling “nine symptoms of body dysmorphia” and “how much does botox cost?” simultaneously, then fuse his own brain trying to work out if he was more concerned by my mental health, or bank balance. So I get sneakier and sneakier, more evasive and guiltier with each appointment; eternally half-ready with an excuse about why he just bumped into me coming out of this clinic, that spa… I am a beauty cheat. It’s quite the moral quandary.