on being an injectable pincushion
a walk inside my body during a lip filler appointment.
On the medical-white wall, a neon sign sings: Welcome to heaven, baby!
Every time I’m taken into this treatment room, I spend the whole time wishing I hadn’t come. And every time I leave, I look forward to coming back.
These are the contradictions of being an average woman in a post-injectable world.
After the standard consultation, I get numbing cream applied. It makes me feel funny, disconnected from my body. It also makes it hard to talk to the nurse. She’s pristine: hair scraped back into a neat bun, spray-tanned, teeth unnaturally white. Me, I can’t tell if I’m drooling or not. I think some of the cream got into my mouth because half of my tongue is numb.
The practice makes sure to note fervently on its price list that it’s gender-neutral. But its lobby and treatment room tell a different story. The décor is aimed squarely at women. And it’s not just femininity it evokes, it’s girlhood - unless they want us to believe that this aesthetic just coincidentally evokes a pre-teen’s bedroom. Pink, white, shiny and fluffy. My hastily thrown-together outfit of shorts and a t-shirt makes me feel as though I’m not the ‘right kind of girl’ to be here. Am I acting the part of patient correctly? Should I be dressed…pinker?
As the nurse wipes my face with alcohol, we are giddy and conspiratorial, she and I, participating in this ritual together. Should I mention my dissenting, rebellious thoughts? How un-feminist I feel right now, how much I regret that I’m wasting money on upholding damaging patriarchal beauty standards?
Nah, that’d probably bring the vibe down.
As she preps the needle, I make sure to talk in a measured, cheerful voice. I keep to surface topics - fashion, events, celebrity gossip. But I realise I’m on edge. My heart is beating fast and I’m breathing shallow. That probably means I’m scared, right? My mind says that’s a touch dramatic, but my body is doing its own thing.
When she finally plunges the needle into me, the fear goes away. I feel a rush of euphoria. Adrenalin spikes through my body. I actually feel pretty good.
Once that dies down, it just feels painful, though. It’s not a dull pain; it’s sharp, eye watering. Shock sinks in after the first few jabs, the kind of shock an injury causes. That slightly flu-ish, compromised feeling. There’s a screech inside, like my lip tissue is issuing me an emergency alarm.
I feel sorry for myself and annoyed with myself at the same time.
The décor begins to seem jarring in contrast to this violent assault on my facial nerves. There’s a velvet vanity chair across the room. There’s a pillow embroidered with a stylised bunny. Is all this girly softness a purposeful effort to evoke comfort?
There, there, we know it hurts. Check out this pastel-pink angora throw blanket.
I can’t stop this pain - I chose it - I just have to sit here, as still as I can, as fuzzy furnishings soothe me from across the room. The needle slowly pokes its way into my flesh, releasing its concoction. I am forced into the moment. It’s like meditation. Very painful meditation. Thinking of other things doesn’t help; wherever I shift my focus, this pain that I almost can’t tolerate follows me.
I know it’s temporary, but knowing that doesn’t help while it’s happening. Right now, the needle is everything, tickling my internal flesh everywhere it pokes - places never before touched by foreign objects, places that know they’re not supposed to be touched. They know that if they’re being touched, there’s a problem. The numbing cream really isn’t all that numbing. Still, I cannot believe there are women who get lip filler without using it. They must be Amazons.
Halfway through the procedure, I start to taste blood. I try not to swallow too much of it, and the nurse wipes it away. I close my eyes. When I open them, I see a minor horror movie scene - a virtual stranger observing the minutia of my face, holding fabric smeared with my blood. Ew.
I try to keep breathing while trying to keep as still as possible for the nurse to do her job. The upbeat, giggly tone of our prior consultation feels ridiculous now, like a false memory.
I wonder, why am I doing this again? Is it really worth it?
As that fucking needle keeps on digging, I remind myself why. Beauty. Anti ageing. Self-care. But there’s a question beneath the question, the one that I really mean.
Who am I doing this for?
And although the answer is obviously myself, I know, deep down, it’s not. Not really. If we lived in a world where we - women, especially - weren’t judged by appearance, where what I saw in the mirror didn’t matter, would I be doing this?
Of course not. I don’t enjoy this. I don’t like paying for pain.
I’m just running and trying to hide from the crone of my nightmares: future me.
Though I’m the only one on this surgical bed, I’m not alone here.
An Australia-wide survey conducted in May 2023 by Metis Healthcare Research asked whether cosmetic injections were part of the responder’s regular beauty routine.
The results that said yes were:
-Ages 30-49 - 62%
-Ages 50+ - 56%
-And, perhaps most eerily, ages 18-29 - 47%.As of May 2024, according to figures released by the Cosmetic Physicians College of Australasia (CPCA), Australia’s national spend on cosmetic treatments has topped $1 billion.
We’re willing to pay for the pain. We want the rewards. I want the rewards.
But I don’t want the risks. Although I trust the well-reputed clinic I go to, it’s impossible to say it’s infallible. That’s why they made me sign four release documents before I went ahead with my appointment. I know that human error exists. I know that horror stories exist. Despite the nurse’s expertise, I’m one twist of my head, one mistake of her hand away from paralysis, blindness or some botched result I’d need even more painful measures to correct. I’m completely at her mercy.
Whatever statistics the nurse quotes at me, how can she and I really know for sure that some freak thing won’t go wrong? What if she loses her balance somehow? What if she’s secretly some psychopath who’ll hurt me on purpose? What if my body jerks beyond my control? Although my mind reassures me the odds are very low I’ll be permanently damaged by this procedure, my body knows it’s a gamble.
It screams at me every time I’m back on this table: Why are you doing this to me? To have one millilitre of volume added to your mouth? Are you serious? Are you that vain? Who cares? Get this needle out of me!
My body feels sorrow and fear, betrayal and anger. It is angry at me. And it is angry at the world for making me feel I have to be here. For making me feel that being here is a good thing. That being here shows I’m responsible somehow, a good girl, a woman who isn’t letting herself go with age.
Bah. Shut up body. You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is fine. This is normal. This is so not a big deal.
“How do you feel?” The nurse asks me afterwards, as I study myself in the hand mirror. “That wasn’t too painful, was it?”
“No,” I fib, with a grin that hurts my mouth. “That was easy. You did great.”
The nurse assures me that the age-related droop of my jawline we discussed won’t be helped by filler along my chin. What would really make a difference would be mid-face filler, which would ‘lift everything up’. I ask her if we have to time to do this today and she says no. But she has some appointments coming up in a few days, if I book in quick.
When I wait at the main counter to pay, I hear my body’s anger again. I vow to write down my thoughts on the walk back to my car. I vow to start this little essay.
As I part with an amount I could spend on a charity donation, or a couple art classes, or a whole shelf of new books, the twenty-something receptionist smiles at me.
“Your lips look great!”
“Thank you,” I say, wishing I could look as youthful as she does. Even though it appears she’s already had some work done.
On my way back to my car, I look up the company’s website and spend the whole walk navigating its booking system.
For now, I forget about this essay idea. I book in my next appointment.