I’ve neve given it much thought, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I have something of a Resting Bitch Face. After all, while I’m plenty friendly, I’m an introvert and I’m no one’s idea of a smiley face kind of gal. No one’s idea of Little Miss Sunshine. So I don’t stand around or walk around with a slap-happy look on my puss. When I’m standing around or walking around, I’m thinking. And when I’m thinking, it’s mostly about the State of the Universe. No laughing matter, that.
Like most women I know, I’m annoyed when a man, generally a complete stranger and never anyone I’d be interested in knowing, tells me to “Smile.” It’s always a man. Seriously, has any women ever walked by someone on the street and uttered the word “smile” to the person she’s passing by? Anyway, it’s happened to me often enough that I suspect I may have a bit of RBF going on.
And even if I were to find out that I’ve got an extreme RBF, I wouldn’t bother to do anything about it. I’m not running for Mrs. America. I’m not looking to get promoted. I’m not looking to sell something to anyone. I’m not looking to get picked up. And I’m not looking to knee-jerk respond to the man in the street who wants me to smile.
But there are apparently plenty of women out there who aren’t happy with what they’re seeing in the selfies they’re posting on Insta. So they’re turning to plastic surgeons for the fix.
“This is actually a common request from patients — I get several each week,” says Dr. David Shafer, a double board-certified plastic surgeon and medical director of Shafer Plastic Surgery & Laser Center in Midtown.
“They may not always use the words ‘resting bitch face,’ but if I mention ‘RBF,’ they say, ‘exactly.’” (Source: NY Post)
Fortunately, the cure for RBF – other than not giving a damn – doesn’t require surgery, just “the injection of fillers into the face and sometimes Botox.” It runs anywhere from $500 to $5,000, and a procedure can last up to two years.
The increase in requests to do something about RBF is attributed to the Kardashians, who are responsible to some degree for “a public shift in focus from the upper to lower face.” Oh, those Kardashians. There’s no end to the good they do. The K’s are more focused on lip plumping, but while you’re down there…
There’s no set approach for fixing RBF – each doctor has their own process. One doctor “injects filers into their [patients’] marionette lines.”
Marionette lines? Are they part and parcel to an RBF, or is starting to look like Howdy Doody or Knucklehead Smith something entirely else women of a certain age need to worry about?
Then there are the women getting butt injections to boost their booties.
Lordy, lordy, lord.
One of my hard and fast health rules is not to take any pill I don’t absolutely need and not to inject any weird chemicals into my body that’s not, say, a flu shot.
It’s pretty easy for me to believe that getting shot upt with Botox or any other marionette filler might have some long run not-great-for-your-health implications.
Guess I’ll just have to live with whatever degree of RBF I’m blessed with.
Just don’t ask me to smile.
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