Beauty Risks
the harmful quest for youth
Rage & Softness is reader-supported! Thank you to the folks who pay monthly to support my work. If you want to upgrade to paid, go here.
Add your favorite song to the newsletter Playlist!
Please “heart” or share my writing with your community and comrades! Forward this email to a friend, put it in your own newsletter, screenshot and share it on social media.
If you would like to pay for a subscription, but don’t want to do so through Substack, you can pay via my Venmo or PayPal. Also, if you’d like a paid subscription, but can’t afford it, please email me and I’ll add you—no questions asked.
I spent last Sunday morning at Urgent Care because I wanted to “fix” how I look. No, really, a beauty tool of mine had caused an irritation and possible infection. Nurses threw around diagnoses like, “fungal,” “bacterial,” and even “shingles.” The doctor decided on bacterial infection.
I bought a derma roller (microneedling tool) over a year ago and have used it off and on with little to no issue. I used it last week, and a day later had, what looked like, a very bad raised rash on my neck. I felt like an idiot.
At Urgent Care, I continued to feel like an idiot as I retold the short story to the triage nurse and then another nurse, and finally to the boss nurse practitioner I was assigned. Each looked at me confused. One asked, “Wait, what is this tool called? What is it for?” It’s too look younger, obviously.
In the copy for the item, which I won’t link to, it says:
Roll your way to brighter-looking skin. It accelerates your skin’s natural regeneration timeline, minimizing the appearance of dark spots and fine lines within a few weeks of use. When paired with corrective serums, microneedling helps to even skin tone, boost collagen production to create the appearance of firmer-looking skin, and give your complexion a youthful glow.
Reading this copy makes me roll my eyes. Just puncture your skin with micro needles and that will somehow be good for you. I made sure my needles were sanitized and I changed the blades monthly per the directions, but shit can still happen. I do want to be clear that getting a microneedling procedure done by a licensed aesthetician is different from what I did. However, there are still risks associated with the procedure, too, including skin infection. None of it seems worth it to me now.
Ah, the forever harmful quest for youth and looking young.
On Tuesday, I was at my doctor’s office because the rash didn’t appear to be getting better. Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” was playing in the waiting room. I had more time to think about my choices. Sitting in medical waiting rooms is a high-anxiety task for me and my spd. All of my senses feel assaulted by the smells, lights, and sounds. I try to orient and find something visually pleasurable to look at, but my brain and body feel scattered and ready to flee or freeze.
My doctor considered what the folks at Urgent Care wrote in their notes and told me: “First, this doesn’t look anything like Shingles, and I’m also not convinced it’s an infection, but it’s good they put you on antibiotics just in case. I think your skin is just really irritated and it will take some time to heal.”
I have an essay in my forthcoming book about aging and the various “beauty” and “anti-aging” tools that are marketed to women. I talk about the pressure to not age; the pressure to essentially hurt yourself to fit a globally accepted aesthetic. Looking “old” and deemed less desirable (aka valuable) scares me. However, having health-related issues that I caused due to my quest for youth scares me more.
I think about all of the things I use on my face that could maim me. I think about what’s in my makeup, my skincare, the tools I use, the time I waste. Naturally, thinking about all of these things can make a person terrified of anything that touches their skin. For me, it’s really easy to go the route of all-or-nothing. I’m resisting that for the time being. However, I’m trying to be more conscious than I have before of the topical products I use.
So here I am, with a big ugly angry rash/possible infection on the left side of my neck, hoping that these bright blue pills will help disappear the harm I caused myself. Perhaps this is the wake up call I needed. Perhaps now that my quest for beauty/youth, my sensory processing disorder and my severe health anxiety have intertwined, I’ll be done. Because I never want to deal with this shit again. I never want to take silly “anti-aging” risks ever again.
I’d rather risk my life in other ways.
The Shapes of Grief: Witnessing the Unbearable - Christina Sharpe
“Handmade things are made by bodies.” -
The Mormon Wives Are Not Okay -
Librarians Resist Israel’s Efforts to Destroy Palestinian Cultural Heritage - Emily Drabinski
The Epidemic of Loneliness: The Library User Health Crisis - Alejandro Marquez
Breaking In: The challenges of making it in the publishing industry from prison - Lyle C. May
Snapchat Reserves the Right to Use AI-Generated Images of Your Face in Ads - Emanuel Maiberg
Tender, Yet Creepy: Dolls help children create wonderfully vivid and imaginative worlds, while also serving as unsettling reminders of the abyss - Tishani Doshi
A Kind of Arctic Madness: On Christiane Ritter’s Essential Memoir of the Far North - Colin Dickey
This new-to-me song: