50 Shades of Vanity

Most people have one birthday, but I have three occasions where I felt I had experienced re-birth.  

 One was my natural birth, the next was when I became a U.S. citizen. But the one I want to talk to you about today was when I experienced my first ever Botox shot.  

 It was back in 2010; I was 37 or 38 years of age. In the midst of an acrimonious divorce, I looked at my face and saw deep cracks setting into my forehead. I could see the march of time right across my face! Thirteen years earlier, I had immigrated from Pakistan to America to start a new life in an arranged marriage with a man I barely knew. I quickly had a daughter and then began the stressful process of recertifying and retraining as a doctor so I could gain rite of passage into the medical system in the country of my dreams—the U.S. of America.  

 During my early 20s, while stressing over med school and relationship issues in my country of birth, I developed an autoimmune skin condition called psoriasis, which contributed heavily to my pre-existing insecurities and turned them into body dysmorphia. Thankfully, getting pregnant helped clear out my skin, but the years of stress from a demanding medical career and loveless marriages aged me, and cracks appeared in my skin in the form of creases that began to etch themselves in my facial skin, especially around my eyes and in the middle of my forehead!

 A friend mentioned Botox! At the time, I was already a practicing doctor in NY and was also interning as a surgical assistant to a plastic surgeon, and so I asked her for my first Botox treatment.   

 It was love at first shot!

Modern medical magic had succeeded in reversing my skin age by a decade! I looked better than what I felt in my 20s. As Botox erased the frown lines and crow’s feet from my forehead, I no longer felt frustrated over wasting over a decade of the peak of my youth on someone I didn’t love.

 Botox and some HA (Hyaluronic Acid) fillers had bestowed agency to me over aging, and time no longer seemed to have marched all over my face in the form of a stressful decade. But getting these treatments was super expensive, and I decided to learn these skills myself!

 This was the start of my journey with baby steps into the magical wonderland of aesthetic anti-aging medicine!

 Today, I am here to help you open yourself up to understanding the value of vanity and its various features—and to inform you that it’s a mistake to be vain about not being vain.

 Lots of love,

 Dr. Sofia D