VANITY? FINALLY GOING UNDER THE KNIFE

IN short order, I’ll be getting plastic surgery for the first time. Going under the knife. Nipped and tucked. “You have a medical condition. It is a medical procedure,” my husband points out every time he hears me say this.

Well, yes. I have a condition called ptosis, which I affectionately call “old-lady eye.” One of my eyelids has decided it’s had quite enough of holding my eye open and has made a run for it. It’s drooping into my line of vision and affecting my otherwise, ahem, perfect eyesight.

In 2004, I had a slipped disk in my back. I was in graduate school at the time so I’d pop two Advil every four hours and move on with my life. Then I started limping.

Did that cause me to get the surgery that had been prescribed for my condition? It did not. No, I had to be taken out of my apartment via ambulance when I could no longer walk and couldn’t get myself to the hospital.

So yes, ptosis is interfering with my eyesight, but I’d probably go blind in both eyes before taking action if I didn’t hate how the droopy eyelid looks. Blepharoplasty, the surgery to fix ptosis, is one of the most common surgical procedures across the country, coming in at No. 5 behind lipo, tummy tucks and breast alteration. Oldlady eye is coming for many of us.

The truth is, getting plastic surgery is a big deal to me and not just because I’m a chicken who puts off medical procedures.

I never had anything against plastic surgery. Other than when I was 18, perfect and didn’t know anything about anything. My perspective was always if you want to do a procedure or three to make yourself feel better about your looks, go for it. (Except the buccal-fat removal trend. Seriously, ladies, no more of this.)

I always assumed I would get something done too. Soon, definitely, very soon.

But I never actually did it. No Botox, no fillers. I haven’t had so much as a facial.

Being occasionally on television — and being very opinionated — leads to receiving some hate mail. I can’t lie that my favorite of the genre is when someone writes to tell me he saw me on TV, I’m ugly and I should stop getting so much Botox. Ha! Well, I showed him: I’m ugly without any Botox at all!

I kid, really. I’ve never been a great beauty, yet I still quite liked how I looked. I’m a 45year-old woman so I should be full of selfloathing, but I don’t seem to have that gene.

At my advanced age, men still whistle at me from trucks and send me heart-eye emoji when they see me on TV. My husband treats me like some rare gem he must always guard lest someone makes off with it in the night.

I always worried that even the shots to the face that are just supposed to make you look well-rested will somehow mess with my not-so-bad thing.

I never thought I was better than the people getting work done, just that I had managed to outrun the earth’s pull as it relates to my face longer than they did.

Now I have to admit that I don’t like how I look anymore, I don’t like it because of the aging that’s occurred, and I am desperate to get it fixed.

I’m no different from someone who can’t live with her wrinkles or doesn’t like what gravity is doing to her face. No different from the women who increase their lips or decrease their noses.

“Except,” my husband adds, “you also can’t see.”