Experts say that comparison is the thief of joy, and this makes lady life extra hard since comparison is inescapable these days. But the truth is, 99.9999999 percent of these “perfect” girls you see on social media get shit done to their faces and bodies. Don’t believe us? Try this little exercise: Google “[insert celebrity’s name] before and after.”

If they don’t have a new nose, a brow lift, butt implants, or lip injections, we’ll pay you $100 (that’ll get you about ten units of Botox, FYI). The most fucked-up thing about this “social media culture” is that everyone is pretending like their new face and bod are God-given. And listen, we are in favor of anything that makes you feel happy and confident. But it’s extremely misleading when people straight up lie and claim things are natural when they aren’t, and it makes the rest of us feel like trolls.

It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of huge lips, hourglass figures, no cellulite, and perfect little noses all over social media. But no one, and we mean no one, is born with a sixteen-inch waist and a forty-five-inch ass. Everyone is editing their pictures, and even the people you assume don’t edit their pictures ARE EDITING THEIR PICTURES. Supermodels, movie stars, bloggers, and even the girl in your book club are all tweaking their photos in some way or other.

Because the three of us live in Hollywood, we get to see these girls in real life and witness the Instagram vs. reality part of it all. Sometimes we’re pleased to see a few wrinkles and a little bit of acne on someone we thought was unattainably flawless, but other times these women are simply unrecognizable in person compared to the perfectly curated photos we see on their feeds. There are a bunch of celebrities who notoriously alter their photos to look like a totally different person, and all the comments are about how hot they are. They’re celebrities, so everyone knows what they look like in real life. And even though it’s an inaccurate representation of them, no one seems to care.

We know this is depressing, so it’s time for a little self-esteem boost! Imagine your favorite celebrity or influencer, and now realize that they’re about three notches less hot than what you see on your feed. (Us inclued.)But we actually have an easy fix: STOP FOLLOWING ANYONE WHO MAKES YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT YOURSELF.

Instead of following supermodels or your frenemy from college who became an Instagram influencer, what we suggest is following ladies who look like you and accounts that make you happy. Becca follows girls with short legs. Keltie stopped following anyone under thirty-five. Jac mostly follows French bulldogs. You gotta know thyself to feel good about thyself!

“Stars, They (Hate Themselves) Just Like Us!”

This is the part where I am supposed to make you feel better about yourself by telling you that all of the many, many, many celebrities I’ve met during my ten-plus years covering the red carpets of Hollywood are totally photoshopped and that they don’t look anywhere near as perfect in real life as they do in their movies and commercials.

I can’t do that because there are, in fact, two celebrities who are as perfect in person as they are in their magazine ads, commercials, and movies.

Charlize Theron and Jared Leto.

Charlize looks like human Photoshop. Her skin is so perfect, so poreless. Her high cheekbones and big eyes rest dramatically atop her supermodel-long body. Even her nail beds are long, with a luscious cuticle surrounding them. She’s the kind of woman who doesn’t have her nails painted, because her nails are naturally shiny and she’s so magical that she would never have even a little bit of dirt under them. The whites of her eyes are whiter than white, and she is so pretty that you don’t even notice what she is wearing, or what her hair is doing. Everything falls away in the presence of that FACE. How is her hair THAT blonde but also that shiny and seemingly healthy? What is this tan? She’s perfectly sun-kissed yet ageless, freckle-less, and shows not a single age spot on her neck. Her neck is an entire other chapter. She’s also cool and seems to have no idea that she is a perfect specimen of a human! She’s Oscar-winning talented. On top of all that, the lady wanted kids and didn’t have a love of her life around to procreate with, so she just did the damn thing and built her dream family, sans man, and adopted—twice. Plus, that face!

Then there’s Jared Leto. I want to point out that, yes, I am incredibly biased based on the 1990s mega cult hit My So-Called Life and Jared’s role in that TV series as Jordan Catalano. Jordan’s moody, shearling-coat-wearing, brooding half smiles were my first celebrity crush and, to be honest, the only fictional character that I’ve ever written about in my journal. Jared has skin that looks like he was born yesterday. At the same time, his face is masculine and rugged, like he loves to drink tequila on the beach and stay up all night. His eyes are the bluest of blue, and he’s so handsome in real life that it’s almost difficult to look directly at him. His eyes send mixed messages of “I want to get to know you” and “You will never be as smart and worldly as I am, you fool.” His hair, oh, the hair! It’s so shiny and brilliant, and its natural ombré is so perfect that even the most skilled hairstylists could never re-create it. I would pay money to have Jared sit at the end of my bed and let me brush his hair for an hour. He is also a poreless wonder, which would make you believe that he spends millions of dollars a year on the top skin care and laser treatments, but he has an air about him that implies he washes his face with a bar of soap and has never even applied moisturizer. Jared has sold a bazillion records, also has an Oscar for acting, and on top of that, he loves to take his mom as his date to big events. Le sigh. Jared is perfect.

Both of these stars seem completely bulletproof. They truly find whatever life force they need inside of themselves, and they are totally secure. They are the only two celebrities I’ve ever met that give off this vibe. They really do not need your approval.

Everyone else—every single other superstar I’ve met up close—is much like you and me. Little insecure human beings full of the emotional residue of the times they got picked last for the team in school. Sometimes I think people from show business can be even MORE insecure because they have been tortured by years of rejection and comparison in Hollywood. These stars, whose pictures we bring into the salon when we want a haircut, all live somewhere on the sliding scale of “has way more wrinkles IRL” to “looks nothing like themselves IRL.” Personalities range anywhere from “Do you like my thing?” to “Please like my thing” to “I have no idea what I am doing” and then all the way to “I know my thing is terrible and I am crushed by the weight of that, so I’m going to act extra difficult so that everyone thinks I’m important.”

Here’s what I know. I hope this brings you some comfort when you look in the mirror or think about your life. The men and ladies of Hollywood have wrinkles, stretch marks, acne scars, gray hair, badly tweezed eyebrows (that won’t ever grow back), period panties, zits, bad breath, dry cuticles, chin hairs, family drama, times they cried at work, times they acted insane after a bad breakup and wished they could have taken it back, yeast infections, food in their teeth, and, much like all of us, they are truly just waiting for someone to say “Good job!” Ninety-nine percent of their hair is fake (yes, even in the commercials), as are their eyelashes, lips, cheekbones, and bodies. Pieces of them have been lifted and tightened and filled and pulled. Ribs have been removed, earlobes have been shortened, and fat has been sucked. These people are constantly seen in front of beautiful, high-powered lighting, after teams of professionals put them together, and then, after all of that, they are photoshopped within an inch of their pores. They have billboards in Times Square, shelves full of awards, and purse and shoe collections that would make anyone feel like an “it girl.”

Even after all of this, many of them still walk into a room unsure of themselves.

I’m not saying any of this to be mean. I’m the most insecure person I know! But I am so often bombarded with images of perfection and confidence, and inspirational quotes telling me to “Be myself,” that it’s hard to feel remotely close to the level of woman the world tells me I should be. Especially after waking up in the morning after a few days of junk food and not enough sleep to see fried hair, under-eye bags, and uneven skin. Every day, all day, I am bombarded by people constantly yelling their achievements at me on social media and at dinner parties. Gouging my eyeballs with their bikini shots and their “candids.” On a good day, I can handle it all. But it’s really hard to feel okay during my bad days—and I’m sure it’s the same for you.

Even after all these years, and all these wins, a fantastic career, a great marriage, and the amount of straight-up privilege I’ve had, I still don’t feel like I did a good job unless someone says to me, “Good job.” (Bonus points if that “Good job” comes from Jared Leto.)

I’m a Monster!

I was fortunate to have a really great childhood, raised by two incredibly kind and supportive parents who sacrificed everything for my happiness. Despite that, I struggled with something that almost every single girl on this planet has struggled with, and that is a battle with body image and body dysmorphia. My confidence as a child was embarrassingly high. I thought I was the coolest and the funniest and the prettiest (even with my thick-ass glasses) and the best piano player (I sucked). But once I went through puberty and the pressures of society came crashing down on me (as they do on everyone), things started to shift.

I was a tiny little thing my entire childhood. When I was fifteen years old, I was 5'6" and eighty-five pounds. People would stop my mom in the mall and accuse her of starving me because I was so thin, but in reality it was just the skinny prepubescent genetics. I got my period shortly after that and actually developed an appetite for the first time in my life. Jack in the Box breakfast Jacks and venti Frappuccinos were my go-to breakfast every morning, and because of this (along with getting six…yes, SIX cookies with my Subway sandwich every day), I gained forty-five pounds in a year. The weight came on super unevenly to my lower stomach, outer thighs, and face, and my skin stretched so much that I had stretch marks and cellulite all over my legs. Oh, and a brand-new double chin! Lucky me. I wasn’t overweight by any means, but it was a dramatic change to what I was used to my whole life, and I literally looked like a different, puffy-faced person post puberty. It actually didn’t bother me too much in high school because I was too concerned with what Taking Back Sunday lyric I should instant message my crush, but once I hit my twenties, my confidence in my body image, and myself in general, really started to plummet.

As I got older, I started obsessively searching for a magical cure for my mental, emotional, and physical instability. I have been prescribed Wellbutrin, Adderall, Xanax, Ambien…you name it, I’ve taken it. I had regular panic attacks, I wasn’t sleeping, and I felt generally emotionally unstable and constantly on the verge of a breakdown, usually triggered by my relationship with my body. After none of the pharmaceuticals worked their magic on me, I got swindled into the “healthy lifestyle” cult mentality, and I thought that food allergies could be the problem. I went to a “holistic allergist” and took an offensively expensive blood allergy test. (Like…do those even work?) At the time I saw the allergist, I was already vegetarian, but my test came back telling me I was severely allergic to literally everything, from dairy to eggs to fish to gluten to soy to nuts to all meats. My stomach felt fine after eating all these things. But, aha! This must be what’s making me feel like balls all the time.

So I cut everything out of my diet and went vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, and nut-free, and I lived on “air and sadness” for a little over a year. I purchased all of her “recommended vitamins,” which cost me a chill few hundred dollars a month. I was on my way to my best new healthy life, so I decided to see a “health coach” I fell for through an online ad, who charged $200 per weekly session and who also forced me to buy his bullshit supplements for the “best results.” Thinking back on it, he was for sure part of a pyramid scheme. Because I was so hopelessly far down the healthy “woke” rabbit hole, I was the perfect candidate to be swindled into buying any essential oil, detox juice, healing crystal, magic pill, group meditation, vaginal steam, or kundalini yoga class thrown my way. I met with naturopaths in basements, Reiki masters in parks, and psychics over the phone on a regular basis. Every “specialist” I met with was positive they knew the cure to my struggling body and mind. And I was desperate and naïve, so I believed them. I was spending an exorbitant amount of money that I didn’t have, in hopes that something would hit. In addition to all that garbage, I weighed myself three times a day, obsessively tracking the slightest gain or loss. During this time, I was also working out two hours a day, so it was safe to say that literally everything in my life revolved around food and exercise. I was a nightmare to date or even be around, because I couldn’t eat or drink anything anywhere. And it wasn’t in the holier-than-thou kind of way; it was in the “I’m miserable and missing out on life” kind of way. All my friends would be slamming BBQ chicken wings and fries at happy hour, and I’d be sitting in the corner, quietly asking the waiter if there was gluten in the salad dressing. I had to research any food or drink outing days in advance to try to figure out what and if I could actually eat. Not only was I limiting my food intake, what I did eat had to be organic, non-GMO, blah blah blah. I was reading labels and ingredients with a magnifying glass like a vegan Sherlock Holmes, googling any unfamiliar words. This “healthy lifestyle” was taking over my life in the worst way possible. Not only was I mildly anorexic, but I was also developing an obsessive case of orthorexia. I was literally making myself sick if I consumed something “wrong.” I remember eating one (ONE!!!) bite of a Del Taco quesadilla and three (THREE!!!) French fries after a night out drinking, and I made myself sick to my stomach for days. If I pound some late-night fast food now, all I have is a bad case of the toots and some mild constipation. But back then, I felt so guilty that I dared eat a few French fries that I went on a week-long juice cleanse to even out my food sins. I did these dangerous juice cleanses at least once a month, and I think it messed up my metabolism rather than doing me any good. I would deprive myself so severely that I’d end up bingeing on things like a jar of almond butter and five avocados in the middle of the night.

The entire time, I felt like a huge bloated mess, even though I was a size six. I nervously avoided the mirror at all costs, and when I did catch a glimpse of my body, I saw a hideous whale. Rolls and dimples and loose skin and cellulite and my repulsive face overwhelmed my vision, and I could barely make out the sad but wonderful human standing behind all the noise. And what did I have to show for all of this food sacrifice? A twenty-pound weight gain, cystic acne, an empty wallet, and a generally looming sense of anxiety and defeat. Even though my entire life revolved around being healthy, I still hid behind my clothes. Baggy band tees and boyfriend jeans were my go-to because I was too scared to show my body at all. I was so mad at myself, and I just felt gross all the time.

This was obviously not a sustainable way to live, and it finally came to a breaking point when I was at South by Southwest later that year, drunk at 1 a.m. and starving, and the only thing to eat was a Jersey Mike’s turkey sandwich. It’s kind of ironic, but one bite of that delicious $5 all-American sammie with extra mayo changed everything for me. I realized that tasty food brings me happiness. It finally hit me that food is such an important and rewarding part of life. Food brings us together, it teaches us about people, and it gives us human expression and a general sense of community. I love going out to eat. It’s one of my favorite activities, and one of my favorite ways to experience the world while traveling to new countries. Eating brings me a very simple sense of joy. I love trying new cuisines and experiencing the ambience and interacting with people. I love the experience as a whole. I finally realized that I was depriving myself not only of delicious treats, but of all the important underlying meaning that came along with food. And, ironically, all it took was a chain-restaurant sandwich.

I decided that day to stop living a life fueled by guilt. I stopped looking at food as the enemy. I stopped counting calories and obsessing over every little thing I put in my mouth. I stopped dreading looking at my naked body in the mirror. I stopped depriving myself of the basic things that bring me joy. I stopped picking apart every little flaw and started viewing my body from a place of gratitude. I haven’t weighed myself in more than five years. I started eating whatever I want, but I’ve learned portion control and balance. I went from gluten-free to gluten-weeeeee. I love hamburgers and chicken nuggets and ice cream, but I eat all of my favorite foods in moderation. (And I know that there are millions of people with real, detrimental food allergies out there, and I can’t even imagine how difficult that is for you.) I work out when I can, but I don’t feel guilty when I can’t. I’ve figured out what works for my own body. And I’m self-aware enough to know what triggers me when it comes to my body image, which means I don’t want to hear about your keto diet or your workout plan, Karen.

But, most important, I’ve learned to accept my flaws and embrace my body. The girls always make fun of me because I “never wear any clothes,” but this is honestly a relatively new confidence I have in my body, and it feels good for the first time in my life. I’ll always have cellulite no matter how skinny I am, I’ll always have small, floppy boobs, and I’ll always have hyper-extended knees and elbows that look wonky in photos. But I also have a lot of great physical qualities and a healthy body that deserves to be celebrated.

Ever since I had this realization, I dropped the extra weight without effort, my skin cleared up, and I generally feel healthier mentally, physically, and emotionally. And I’m not a total pain in the ass to be around anymore! Listen, as much as I feel like I’ve come a long way from eating air and sadness, and my body dysmorphia has calmed down a lot in the last few years, I’d be lying to you if I said I have been magically cured. I still get down on myself every single day, because the path of acceptance with body image is a never-ending journey. But I stopped letting my negative thoughts get the best of me twenty-four hours a day. Some days I feel pretty, and some days I feel like Shrek. And I’m okay with that.

It Costs a Lot of Money to Look This Mediocre

By the time I was in third grade, I could already pick out who was the prettiest at my school and what that meant. In class, the girls with the pretty hair and pretty dresses were always favored over the girls with tragic bowl cuts and mud-stained sweatpants. Life started to be all about outward appearance: who had the Guess jeans, the good hair, the fancy sneakers, and whose moms let them wear colored lip gloss to school. I look at my niece, who is around the same age right now, and I cannot fathom that she’s at all interested or aware of these things, but if she is anything like I was—she has already begun to think that people’s opinion of her matters. A lot.

I remember the first time I was aware that body shape was going to impact my life, and it’s all thanks to Dolly Parton. For Halloween, my mom had allowed me to wear her old vintage ice skating dress. It was made of green velvet and had little white pom-poms around the edge of the skirt with a matching vest. I was beyond proud. When I left for school that morning, it was like I was on the catwalk of Paris Fashion Week. I loved my look. Later in class, when we had the Halloween parade, I started looking around and realized that all the other princesses and superwomen (even the zombies) had better costumes than me and were getting more attention. Then, for whatever reason, I grabbed two of the balloons floating in the middle of the class party, stuffed them down my shirt, and when people asked me who I was, I replied, “I’m Dolly Parton!” I was a hit. My classmates couldn’t get enough of me. I was the talk of the third grade. It was then that I realized that even though I knew almost nothing about Dolly Parton, I knew enough. I knew that boobs mattered. Boobs made you popular.

But my boobs never came. As I got older and older, everyone around me was developing, and I remained flat as a board. I experimented with stuffing my bra and wearing my brother’s massive oversize T-shirts (so that no one would notice) while explaining loudly, to nobody in particular, that I was a ballerina and that it was important for me to not have boobs.

Life went on, and when I left home to become a professional dancer in New York at eighteen, I learned the showbiz secret of wearing a bra where the cup was completely filled with foam. This allowed for my tiny titties to swish up perfectly, forming a faux cleavage (I think they make these officially now and they’re called “add two cups,” but at the time, we made our own). I faked it till I was naked, and I saw a cool twelve-year-old boy’s body staring back at me in the mirror.

Itty-bitty-titty committee aside, the most hilarious thing about my twenties is that I legitimately thought I was HOT SHIT. I learned to do a black smoky eye, I bleached my hair blonde, and I got a “dark” weekly spray tan. I had freckles and age spots, horribly overplucked eyebrows, and blue nail polish. But I felt like I was a goddamn supermodel. I even coined a term for my hot twenty-something self, “braless and flawless!”

It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles and started working in TV that I realized I was a hideous beast who needed to change almost everything about myself.

Back I went to the “add two cups” bras. I learned about the lasers that can take away sun spots, the creams that take away zits, hair extensions, lash extensions, nail extensions, and eyebrow rehab (yes, I went). Los Angeles is a place where the two prettiest girls from every small town in the world gather to realize that their towns had very low bars for looks. We now have a term for this called the “glow up.” But for me, as all my parts started to glow up, one thing started to sag down.

My chin.

Call it DNA. Aging. Gravity.

Maybe it was because social media starting ruling my life. It seemed like the more time I spent on TV, the more unkind messages I would receive from the viewers. Everything from my “saggy knees,” to my “horse face,” to “piss ants for eyes.” People would say to me, “Oh! Just forget it, they’re just jealous.” But just as I was brushing off their comments, I would catch a look at myself in the mirror, and for the first time, I would notice the flaws that the viewers were pointing out. I actually called my mom one night and asked her why she never told me that I had a massive forehead. She laughed and said, “Oh, honey, I never wanted you to feel bad about it,” confirming that I had been blind to it all along. I was not hot shit. I was a hometown ten, a New York seven, and a Los Angeles four.

As my career on TV began to heat up, I would run home after work and watch my show and segments with excitement. I was beyond proud. I was thrilled. I was lucky. I was working my ass off, and my star was rising! I was also really good at completely tearing myself apart. My voice, my cadence, but mostly MY NECK. While interviewing celebrities, I spent most of my time on camera being shot in profile. In my eyes, that profile perfectly showed my double chin! A wattle!

Living in Los Angeles, I started to look at all the things I could do to fix this problem with my face. At first, a dermatologist suggested that I fill the muscles in my neck with Botox so that I would release some of the tension pulling down on my jaw. Hundreds of dollars later, I was frozen. It didn’t do much. Next, at a facial place, a lady convinced me that what I really needed was an at-home laser machine. She wanted me to use it every morning and night for skin tightening. I kept the machine charged up in my car, and every day on my way to and from work, I lubed up my neck and drove while lasering my neck over and over. This tiny bit of equipment cost me an entire two-week paycheck. I bought the masks, the sleeping creams, and the tightening rubs. When the fad was to “freeze the fat,” I connected my neck to a giant vacuum, let it suck up my chin fat for forty minutes, and froze it. It hurt like a bitch! For the low cost of hundreds of dollars, it actually made it worse. I used contour makeup and stopped letting people photograph me from the side. Next, I was talked into injecting my neck with fat-eating enzymes. It was beyond painful and crazy expensive. The first week, my neck swelled up to the size of a tennis ball, and I had to sleep sitting up, in pain, with a tensor band around my head. My husband was thrilled. Although I do believe that some of the fat was removed, it did nothing for my saggy skin, and so I was left with even saggier skin, with nothing to support it. I gave up. I promised myself that I would stop messing with my face and that I was just going to have to deal with this new look. I would ask friends and family if it was noticeable, and I began to get the “Well, I never would have noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out, but now that you have…”

Naturally, I started researching chin liposuction, and I was convinced that was what I needed. All these stars in Hollywood had twenty-year-old necks but were closer to fifty. I began to ask around in the Hollywood circles, “Who is doing this miracle work?” I got some recommendations and paid hefty “consultation fees” to meet with a few of them. Everyone said it would be easy to fix me, and that they would do this and that in one day, no problem. Finally, I was talking about it with a friend who happened to be an A-list celeb’s personal assistant, and she suggested that I go to Dr. Diamond.

I went in for my consultation, and after taking horrendous side-angle photos of me, Dr. Diamond came into the room less than confident. I immediately thought, Why did I mess so much with my face? Who had done all this to me? I was a thin girl and the problem was never fat! He circled me in the chair over and over, said I had the neck of a sixty-year-old woman and that I had really done damage to my skin. He explained that you need the muscle and the fat under your chin to hold the skin nice and tight. Through my self-prescribed concoction of fat removers, I had removed all the fat from my chin. Now, there was nothing holding it up, hence the saggy skin.

I came back weeks later. This time, he called some colleagues into the room to discuss deep lasers that go inside the muscle to see if those might work. He then came up with a game plan! If they used the lasers, some chin filler, and his signature “minimally invasive neck lift,” there might be a 10 percent improvement. He couldn’t make any promises. I was hoping for more like 90 percent improvement, but I wouldn’t admit it to him. I begged him to fix me 25 percent!

It turns out that minimally invasive surgery isn’t really the correct title for what I had done. I suppose they call it minimally invasive because I have no big scars on my face. Instead, I had three little tiny holes made, one below my chin and two behind the ears. I was put under full anesthesia and, after the surgery, I was wheeled out in a wheelchair in a full head wrap. I had to sleep sitting up and alternated every twenty minutes from ice on to ice off for weeks. Dr. Diamond suggested that I spend an hour inside a hyperbaric chamber to help with healing. I was on serious drugs. I wasn’t allowed to eat any solid food for two weeks, and I wasn’t even allowed to suck through a straw, since they didn’t want my chin muscles working at all. My face was swollen and bruised, and I didn’t leave the house because I was wrapped up in a head wrap to help keep the chin healing correctly. I wanted this to work, so I followed the post-surgery rules perfectly.

Over time, the swelling went away, and my beautiful new chiseled chin began to make its debut! Ten percent? Heck no! I felt like a million bucks. Everywhere I went, people would say to me, “You’re looking incredible! Have you lost weight? Did you get your eyebrows done?” I was thrilled with the results and, unlike my intentions for sticking those balloons down my shirt in the third grade, the outward attention was meaningless to me. My favorite part of my transformation was that when I looked in the mirror, I no longer looked straight at my neck. Instead, I began to look at the parts of my face that I love; my full cheeks, my cute ears, my freckled nose, my pretty, vibrant skin. I felt a confidence I simply hadn’t felt in years. I know I’m supposed to have a different answer, about how beauty comes from the inside, but hell, my outside was cute again!

I used to think that people who had plastic surgery were vapid, with low self-esteem or daddy issues. I would question how a woman could ever put implants in her chest or suck out fat from her thighs. I blamed girls for taking the easy way out instead of learning to love themselves or heading to the gym. What this journey has taught me is that, in an effort to not be one of those “plastic” girls, I did all of the non-invasive treatments on top of each other, without ever really seeking the advice of a professional. What probably could have been fixed with a professional laser in an hour became an almost unfixable issue because I got sucked into believing that none of these treatments had any downsides.

While admitting this surgery publicly, and sharing it on our LadyGang TV show, I felt a lot of different emotions. I felt brave, because when I was researching the surgery there were so few women admitting they had done it. I felt scared that my coworkers, bosses, or followers would think less of me. I felt proud that I was changing the conversation in Hollywood! Instead of being like 99 percent of the women who just share that they are “drinking water and getting sleep,” I was able to say, “Ladies in your thirties, forties, and fifties, your neck is normal, these women are having neck lifts and they’re not telling you!” I felt a bit embarrassed and self-absorbed to admit that something as dumb as what my neck looked like would matter to me. But mostly, I felt really happy. When I looked in the mirror, or looked at pictures of myself, I felt pretty. I know that’s beyond stupid. I can almost hear everyone saying, “But you were pretty before.” Much like everything else in life, though, someone can tell you something a million times. Unless you really feel it for yourself, it doesn’t matter much.

I feel pretty. In a world that makes me feel like a hideous beast all the time, it’s nice to have one less thing to hate about myself.

My neck lift was selfish.

It was expensive and completely indulgent.

It was exactly what I wanted.