by Normally my left eyebrow is higher than my right. The difference is particularly pronounced when I read them: it gives me a skeptical expression. And this wasn’t something I realized I appreciated about myself until it was gone. I couldn’t get that look anymore. When I raised my eyebrows, the circumflex was the same on both sides.
Technically speaking, this symmetry made me more attractive. In his 2019 tour de force on “instagram faceIn The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino asked plastic surgeons about the “single and cyborgian” face that seemed to dominate Hollywood and the land of online influencers. “It’s a young face, of course, with poreless skin and high, plump cheekbones. He has cat eyes and long, cartoonish eyelashes; “He has a small, clean nose and full, lush lips,” he explained. A plastic surgeon, Jason Diamond, told her that while no one look would work for everyone, “there are constants,” adding: “Symmetry, proportion, harmony. “We are always trying to create balance in the face.”
But what if the imbalance, that asymmetry, is where the interest (even humanity) lies?
My raised eyebrows used to bother me. Someone once told me that I seemed Dora Maar, the surrealist photographer and muse of Pablo Picasso. At the time I took it as an insult because I didn’t know if the reference was to the woman herself or to her 1937 woman. portraitin which their eyes are misaligned and looking in different directions.
However, after my experience with Botox, I reconsidered the comparison and considered it more of a compliment. My face will never be normatively beautiful, but it might light a spark. I was surprised to find myself happy when, after about six months, the injections wore off and my eyebrows were back to their old tricks.
I worry that this hard-won view is under siege, as facial uniformity becomes increasingly dominant with the ubiquity of injections and heavily filtered images online. In October for The Cut, Daisy Schofield wrote about teens already focusing on anti-aging skin care. “The standard of beauty is to stay young and I try to adapt to that standard of beauty,” a 15-year-old girl told her. In 2021, for The Times, Jessica Schiffer wrote about people in their 20s and 30s receiving “Baby Botox” to combat an “all-consuming anxiety” about aging.
