I Refuse To Worry About 'Midface Volume Loss'

Add this to the ever-growing list of things aging women are supposed to worry about: "Midface volume loss." Midface volume loss! Wha—why—Ugh. [Bangs head against desk.] [Worries whether said banging is speeding up midface volume loss.]

With a headline that reads more like a mandate than a statement — "New Beauty Goal: Plumper Cheeks" — the Times explores the allegedly growing trend of women taking to dermatologists in order to restore facial volume. People like Christina Conti, 44, who "tried fillers in her nasolabial folds" but found the procedure lacking. "It helped with those wrinkles but didn’t give me back volume,” Conti told the Times. “Doing the folds wasn’t enough.”

It will never be enough! Nothing will be enough, lady, once you start going down the rabbit hole of trying to preserve the face of an 18-year-old forever! You are going to keep aging, and eventually no amount of injectable botulism and collagen can stop it. This. Is. A. Fact. Why can't we as a society acknowledge it (pretty pretty pretty pretty please)?

I don't mean to knock Ms. Conti. I hate the game, not the player; and in a world where men can have wrinkles and folds and fine lines but women can't even have pores, I get it. I get the impulse to try and stop the appearance of aging. Heck, I've given into the impulse. But at some point we have to say enough is enough, and I guess, personally, this is my breaking point. I refuse to feel bad about midface volume loss. I refuse to think of trying to stop it as anything but absurd.

"There’s a reason for the phrase 'baby face,'" the Times tells us. Yes, and that reason is that it describes the face of a baby. It does not describe something that 44-year-old women should aspire to. Have we collectively lost our freaking minds?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is set to approve Voluma, a form of the filler Juvéderm that's specifically designed and marketed to address midface volume loss. This has made the dermatologists quoted in this article very happy. "Nine times out of 10, people don’t realize what the real problem is,” said Dr. Peredo, a clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai who performs cheek-filling operations.

The problem, sir, is you. The problem is this article. The problem is a culture that tells older women they are useless if they don't have the cheekbones of an infant. That is the problem — not midface volume loss.

[Bangs head against desk again.] [Does not worry whether said banging is speeding up midface volume loss.] [Wonders instead why the New York Times seems to hate us so much.]