The Case of the Disappearing Lip

and other mouthy issues

Welcome readers, old and new!

Please tap the ❤️ above to familiarize yourself with what a trends company is calling the “Synthocene Era” and how a few sharp women in the beauty industry believe it will influence how we think about our appearance. Warning: It mostly ain’t good.

More that ain’t good, if you love wearing extensions.

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I wrote a story for Allure several months ago about rethinking my personal choice to eschew plastic surgery. Why? Because of my current discontent with the appearance of my mouth. Here’s an excerpt:

The problem is with a particular manifestation of aging, which I’ve described this way: The corners of our mouths droop, making us look impatient or fretful when we’re not—intensifying resting bitch face (RBF) if we’re already prone to it. That situation is exacerbated by an unfortunate combination of gravity, bone loss, and reduced soft tissue volume. Because of this inevitable loss of structural support, the area around my mouth seems to have set itself into something that looks exactly like disdain. Disdain! The emotion I am least likely to succumb to, ever! Interestingly, it’s not even the look on my face that disturbs me; it’s the consequences of the look. Because unless I’m smiling, someone who catches me glancing at them would most likely believe not only that I think they’re hardly worthy of my attention, but that I am suffused with contempt.

So not me. So very much not me.

Allure titled the story “At 75, I’m Rethinking My No Plastic Surgery Stance,” as I’d decided to visit a plastic surgeon for the first time to learn what my options were. Fortunately, I wound up in the office of plastic surgeon Melissa Doft. With great patience, she filled me in (in more ways than one, eventually) on the possibilities regarding my perioral area, including those pesky vertical lines above my lip.

Flip your way over the paywall for excellent advice about lip fiddling.

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