Botox is my Tesla
In the heady days of the Kate Moss ‘90’s, and right around the time Elon Musk was dropping out of Stanford, I was a Vogue subscriber. I loved paging through the thousands of fashion ads, inhaling the perfume samples, and reading articles about the New York City elite. I basked in the wonderful styles and flawless elegance of the women in this publication. I wanted to be them. So much so that I even went to a model search and got a call-back…which I totally chickened out on.
Now, as an elder millennial/gen-xer, I realize the toll such consumption has taken on my perception of aging.
Namely, I am against it for me personally.
In many of the male-dominated, engineer-heavy, financial independence crowds, the splurge of choice is something like a Tesla.
For me, it’s Botox.
Yep, that’s right. I get Botox. Injected into my face. 3-4 times per year. Probably the most anti-mustachian statement ever made by someone who’s officially FIREd.
Maybe it’s vain. Maybe its because I worked in a hyper-cosmetic environment and needed to “look the part”. Maybe it’s because society has convinced me youth is so important that I can’t have a crease between my eyebrows. Whatever it is, I have been doing this since my late twenties in the hope that I could slow down the hands of time.
When I don’t get it, holy crap I can tell.
The entire year of 2023, I decided to go without it.
I am in my forties, and I was curious what my age was starting to look like. The truth was…I was starting to look old. Like Elon standing next to Grimes old. And I felt some surprising discomfort with that. Why was it? Why was I so horrified to realize my natural state? I don’t consume much social media these days, so where was this feeling coming from? Was it my own ideals, or had I internalized cultural messaging?
After all, Vogue was just a magazine. It was a finite number of pages. It was too cumbersome to be carried around. The same went for all influential media back in the day. From time to time, you could walk away from it. You could leave behind the constant stream of advertisement and influence and oh, I don’t know, go out and live your life.
All the same, I’m sure the supermodels of the nineties indelibly imprinted the message of beauty ideals onto my subconscious. Plus, I grew up in a Connecticut suburb where kids get nose jobs for graduation. (The upside is that at least when I forget my classmate’s names at reunions, it’s not age-related memory decline, it’s their face. But I digress.)
Today, not only can you access every fashion publication imaginable, but also every movie, music video, show, tiktok and Instagram feed of anyone, any time of day or night. There’s not just a handful of apex human specimens on display, there is a never-ending stream borne aloft on an addictive platform.
With this type of onslaught, what person can stand a chance? Who could consume any of it and still feel good about their normal, unadulterated self? Apparently not me.
My discovery of the FIRE movement did get me to question a lot of things. Especially how I spent my money. More specifically, why I thought I needed to spend money in the way I did.
It turns out that I thought I needed to spend money to look a certain way. I had an image that I thought I needed to uphold. Definitely in my profession, I would look out of place if I were not getting Botox.
So I was stuck in this conundrum. I felt ridiculous creating a line item in my budget for routine cosmetic injections, but I also worried that stopping Botox would leave me at a disadvantage. Everyone else I worked with got it. And they all looked amazing.
You tech bros have it so, so easy.
The weirdest thing is that early retirement actually made this whole conundrum worse.
When I left my profession, I got a lot of push back from friends and colleagues. I had a few difficult phone calls from concerned friends wanting to remind me that I was at the “height of my earning power” and that it would be terrible if I “fell into financial struggle”, and, “regretted my decision” to leave.
All of this made me want to show just how well I was doing. I wasn’t going to show up at a social occasion or a coffee date with a former colleague looking haggard. I was retired and living my best life, after all. I doubled down and continued the Botox.
And by golly, I enjoy looking amazing.
Maybe that’s ridiculous and vain, and blah blah blah. But, the whole idea behind FIRE is to be able to live the life you want, paradoxical as your choices may seem. I don’t color my hair, get my nails done, or do literally any other frivolous thing. At this point in my journey, I’m keeping the $1200/year cosmetic habit. Just like probably every one of Elon’s baby mamas.
The truth is, I may still need to work on why I like looking at myself in the mirror with it rather than without it. But that’s an article for another day.
For now, Botox is my Tesla.
