Weekend Open Thread

63 Comments

1. Ladies, I want botox. Not looking to be convinced otherwise. I’ve decided I’d like to give it a whirl. I’m 41 and have some lines across the top half of my forehead that seem to be there always (vs just showing up during my constant face-making, as I have no poker face..).

   I have a few friends who use botox and it’s really subtle so I know how to get a good referral. But, what am I asking for? I don’t want a frozen face. I don’t want over perky eyebrows. I’m not expecting to walk out looking like I’m 20. I just want these fine lines that never go away any more to not be there (they get caky, dried out and just… no). I just want some smoothing on my upper forehead. I want to be be armed with the right lingo so I know what to tell the person I go see.

   Also, what’s the going cost these days? What’s reasonable (or not)? How frequently do you go for maintenance? Anything else to know? I’m in greater Boston fwiw. TIA.

   1. I think you tell the injector exactly what you said here. Point out the lines that you don’t want.
      I am 45 and started doing Botox about 20 years ago, and have no regrets. I only do my forehead and it is pretty frozen but with a little eye brow movement. I switched to getting Dysport instead and it’s lasting longer for me. Make sure you sign up for the rewards app for eithe Alle or Aspire depending on which brand you go with.
      At this stage, I am going about every 5 months and it costs $400 per visit. I live in Houston.

   2. I would just say that! “I want these lines (point them out) not to be there and some smoothing on my upper forehead. I don’t want my eyebrows to be too lifted.” Say that you won’t be upset if it’s too light, you’ll just come back and get more.

      My dermatologist does 15 units of tox for my elevens and to perk up the outer corner of my eyebrows, and it costs $350 every 5-6 months (probably really should go every 4 months but I don’t mind it wearing allll the way off). There’s usually a little bit left in the syringe and she puts it in my chin.

      1. I should say, I actually get Daxxify – you can ask for “botox” as a general thing but your injector might not use Botox specifically.

   3. Tell them you want a natural look, it’s about $500 for me in a VHCOL city at a top doc for this. I go anywhere from 1-4 times a year now but have been doing it since my mid30s and am 50 now. It’s incredible! Ask a friend for a referral.

   4. Go to SkinCare Physicians in Brookline – I use Dr. Morton but any of them are good – and say “natural look” and show them the lines. I can still move my forehead but very slightly, important to me bc I don’t want to look weird, I just wanted the 11s gone and also the forehead lines not to develop. It is $450/area or $875 if you do 2. I go every 4 months – this last time was 4.5 and that was a bit too much for me.

   5. I pay $14/unit for 27 units. 21 of the units go to my “1” (instead of an 11), and the rest is light forehead Botox. I go to nurse practitioner who works under a plastic surgeon. The light forehead Botox basically evens out my eyebrows— something I had never noticed! But it actually makes a difference because I’ve had people remark on how relaxed I look. Just tell your provider what you said here and they’ll walk you through it.

      Lasts me 3 months. Worth every penny, makes more of a difference than anything else I do. Wish I had started sooner.

      Also, I was interested in a lip lift, and she talked me out of it because it wasn’t right for me. She really explained it, and I definitely would’ve regretted it. Glad that I have someone ethical.

   6. Let your injector advise. Mine uses dysport. I’m 52. I go every 4 months or so. I started with just forehead wrinkles and to even out my eyebrows ( one naturally sits higher). She now does crows feet area.

2. Therapy question – there were a tough couple of years recently (pandemic with high-risk condition, an extreme and unexpected mental health crisis in a close family member, miscarriage, a very stressful elder care situation) and luckily every one of those things is now in a better place. I went to therapy for a few sessions related to the elder care situation and found it fairly unhelpful. To get through everything, I basically shoved it all down, put one foot in front of the other, and waited it out. Now that it’s been a little while and I can finally breathe again, part of me is wondering whether therapy (if I can find a better therapist) would be helpful for truly processing what happened instead of just burying it. However, my husband and one of my best friends have both suggested that it might be best not to pull at that thread since what happened is in the past and isn’t expected to recur (they both have good reasons for having this viewpoint and I don’t entirely disagree – just not sure what’s right for me). I’m truly not sure what would be best. On the one hand, simply trying therapy to see if it does feel helpful seems like the obvious choice – but on the other, it’s significant time, effort, and cost to find a therapist these days, especially in my area. WWYD?

   1. I think it completely depends on what type of person you are. I, personally, know that I am not a therapy person. I’ve tried. It’s not helped me as much as other ways of processing have. I think there are definitely people and personalities and situations where it’s super important and helpful. But I don’t think therapy should be a response to all.

      1. It wasn’t for me either. Like it was a new and different experience, but it felt like he was trying his best to validate my thoughts all the time, and even I knew not all of them deserved validation. And there never seemed to be any action items on moving forward. I had to do that on my own. So I figured I could do the rest on my own and did.

   2. I would stop asking others anI would stop asking others and ask myself if I want to go to therapy. No one is a better authority on your life, mind, body, soul than yourself.

      I don’t mean it in an abstract way. I mean literally – sit down by yourself, no phone/social/etc. or other people, and spend some quiet time with yourself and ask yourself how you feel about that time in your life and if you are finished with it for now. Maybe you’ll get an answer, maybe not right away. but check in often with yourself, and then trust yourself that you are the best more authentic authority for yourself. d ask myself if I want to go to therapy. No one is a better authority on your life, mind, body, soul than yourself. If that really doesn’t feel true, a good therapist might help with that. :) But so can other things too.

      1. I think if more people were willing to honestly check in with themselves, their own history, and if warranted, their own behavior, there would be less of a need for day to day therapy sessions.

      2. sorry for the weird double postings. The comment was having trouble posting and I copy/pasted and clearly failed at doing that well. LOL

         1. Ha!I thought wow, she really deeply believes that! I don’t disagree:)

      3. OP here and normally I’m quite good at being in touch with myself, but I honestly do think these events changed me, especially with them all being more or less concurrent. It’s hard to know whether my knee-jerk reaction, which is more “f it, it’s in the past” is simply another defense mechanism that isn’t helping me.

         1. Good context. So to see if you are just doing a knee-jerk reaction or not –

            In the quiet time with yourself, contemplate if there is a problem/intrusive thoughts/issues related to that time that are still present in the present day that you would like to leave behind. If there are, then you have something concrete to work on in therapy or in whatever other modality of processing you want to use.

            If you don’t have anything that is a problem in this present time, perhaps you have processed it the time.

            Another thought – I don’t love journaling, but I do find it very claritying when I do make myself do it. Just sit down and write for 10 minutes; no rules, just write – the pen can’t stop moving even if it’s writing “blah blah blah”. Sometimes all of a sudden truth/answers/clarity comes out in surprising ways.

            1. good god the typos. I think I do know how to use computers, write and type but maybe not anymore for this Friday.

   3. I had some horrible issues during Covid (partner and I were both diagnosed with cancer while young kids were home for remote learning). A year after we finished treatment I started therapy. I had lost the ability to handle any stress. Even the smallest thing (work, home, etc) made me go into panic mode, full on freak out. I was very angry about everything. Plus I was obsessed with preplanning our cancer treatments if they came back. I found therapy helpful. Am I a completely changed person from therapy? Of course not. But I can see the problems emerge and now I have tools to address.
      I also read a lot of books on being happy and life after trauma. You could try those first

   4. You say it seems like the obvious choices, but I’m not sure it is the way that everyone processes, but it may be the best way for you to process. Other considerations: Finding a good therapist often takes a lot of tries; would it make sense to put that effort in now so you have one both now and in the future? It sounds like it would have helped to have had someone better in the thick of things before. Do you feel solid enough that therapy is more “can’t hurt, might help,” or do you feel like you need to avoid therapy that could be counterproductive?

      1. I didn’t really get into it in the OP but I do have concerns it could be counterproductive (and it’s part of the reason my husband and best friend are concerned too). We all saw another family member basically have a horrific experience where a bad therapist encouraged him to have the world’s worst victim mindset and cut off family and it made him very, very unhappy – no doubt worse off than before. That same family member has a good therapist now, though, so clearly it’s not always a disaster, but it does give me pause.

         1. Therapists can have very different training and philosophies and goals. For people with certain kinds of diagnoses (like personality disorders), it’s often advised to stick with someone and give it a chance, since it’s normal to resist the process even with the right therapist. But I think that for grief and trauma, it’s okay to give very few chances and just move on until finding the right fit. That is what my friend did after a terrible loss, and the therapists she quit seeing were really bad, but the one she stuck with helped her a lot in a truly difficult situation.

            I had sort of assumed that therapy was mostly for helping with people with loss and trauma, but my impression is that this is actually a subspecialization that a lot of therapists don’t really have much of a background in. So that may also help narrow it down to people who are more likely to be prepared to help.

            1. I would treat the first visit as an interview for the therapist. Ask what their approach is and what modality they use. Tell them what you are looking for. Ask them about goal-setting. Ask how directive their approach is.

   5. I went through something similar and when the situations resolved and were unlikely to repeat, I still felt on edge. I started therapy with a therapist who specialized in trauma because I thought I needed to work through the “secondary trauma” of being a caregiver for the people going through the traumatic situations, but ended up with a PTSD diagnosis of my own.

      I initially scoffed at the label because I’m a suburban mom, not a war veteran, but the treatment has been incredibly helpful. PTSD treatment really focuses on processing traumatic memories and improving your daily functioning. It’s a very specific type of therapy, so maybe it would help to meet with a therapist who specializes in it? On the other hand, if you don’t feel like your daily functioning is really being affected, maybe your husband and best friend are right!

   6. In a similar situation, I went to a handful of therapy sessions – 5ish – and got some coping strategies for when the bad memories popped up, and a chance to think through whether I wanted to pursue official ptsd treatment, with a neutral, supportive person. I ultimately decided not to, but just having that sense of control/respect for me & me decisions of a professional letting me make that call was pretty healing in itself

   7. Maybe not what you’re looking for but I’m not a big therapy person, I think it keeps you stuck. Some phases of life are hard, you get through them, you move on. I focus on the now and the future. I’d rather spend my time and money on a girls weekend laughing with my best friends.

   8. I’m not a therapy person, but if I had a few distinct things I wanted to get help processing, then I might try to engage a therapist for a limited time, but I’d be totally up front about how you only want to do 4-6 sessions and not more.

   9. I tried it and found it maddeningly unprofessional. I went to see if it would help during MeToo and she wanted me to relive childhood events. Googling, the guidelines said that isn’t what you should do. I do have one person with a doctorate that I work with on a chronic medical issue, but before I found her I had some really dreadful first sessions with less qualified therapists.

   10. I think this is a great question to ask yourself. “Therapy” isn’t necessarily what everyone who has experienced bad stuff needs – if it’s primarily about just talking things through, well you can do that with you friends sometimes (obviously being conscious of their own needs and how that might feel for them, but most good friends can handle 2 or so conversations about something genuinely hard).

       One left field consideration is what about someone who provides a slightly different but close ish service. I have been through a tough loss (husband suddenly died; young children) and the best “therapist” was actually my acupuncturist. I’d just show up every week, say how I was feeling, she’d be sympathetic and stick a few needles in, and… eventually I felt better. It might be worth thinking about whether something like that could help you.

       I also saw some more traditional therapists and they didn’t really click for me.

3. I keep thinking about this op-ed in the NYT about how “the resistance libs were right,” or maybe the headline was once from a quote mentioned in the article: “the hysterical pussy hats were right.”

   Where were you in all this, and how has your position changed, if any, over the past 10 years?

   I got pretty hysterical in the early days but not enough to actually knit a hat… I thought it was over when JB was elected, that we couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to elect DJT again. Especially not after 1/6. I was wrong!

   Anyway, gift link – https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/resistance-libs-trump-fascism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.KFA.Bq_2.2qQ1DAeEnzEm&smid=url-share

   1. This is what annoyed me about the headline. In my world it felt like liberals thought this was over and that the Biden administration wasn’t dooming us to what’s happening now. The people who correctly predicted how things would go weren’t liberals.

      1. huh, that’s a take I haven’t heard. so conservatives correctly predicted the complete downfall of American world dominance and the cruel, fascist policies currently taking place to distract us from the money-grubbing president and his family?

         1. Anon at 3:10 might have meant that these people were farther left than “liberals.”

         2. No, the people who correctly predicted how things would go seemed to be mostly different kinds of dissidents and progressives, not conservatives or liberals.

      2. This last year-plus has been the worst I told you so ever. I wish I’d been wrong about something but batting 1000 so far.

         1. Same. Truly wish I had been wrong here.

   2. I’m liberal, and I’ve always been liberal. I was informed I was intense, and overreacting in the early aughts (college). Due to my activism/education in a specific area I had a jump on understanding some of what we all consider to the basics by now. It was nice when, in 2016, my fellow white progressives started paying more attention and finally learned the word “intersectionality.” Anyone who thought this was over and done with when Biden was elected was, quite frankly, woefully naïve and has no clue what we’re up against. If you are an educated white liberal who first learned about the Federalist Society within the last couple of years I don’t want to hear from you.

   3. QAnon was right about the vast secret pedophilia ring that involved powerful people, including some Democrats. They got a number of other things wrong, though, including DJT being their savior.

      1. Pack it up here. We’ve finally hit “QAnon was right.”

         1. A broken clock is right twice a day

   4. I knew so many women who marched in that first parade, and I never thought of them as hysterical. Sarah Kendzior, maybe.

      1. People like Sarah Kendzior come across as hysterical to those less harmed by the status quo. My favorite quote from her about the 2016 election was that “nobody saw this coming” referred to the pundit class, as marginalized people, “nobodies,” have been speaking about institutional oppression for centuries, and the risk of the harm spreading to less marginalized people.

         Metaphorically, it’s like a person who owns a big aggressive dog who doesn’t see the dog as dangerous because the dog likes them. They give the dog affection, food, and treats, and ignore other people’s warnings that the dog could hurt someone if not restrained. Even leftists are suggesting to welcome ex-MAGA folks with open arms, though many have not taken sufficient action to show contrition or that they are trustworthy.

   5. After the 2016 election I asked my gyno about switching from the pill to an IUD, expecting Roe to get overturned. She said that will probably happen but the IUD will expire first. I didn’t switch to an IUD but sure enough it would’ve expired a few months before Dobbs.

      1. I got my tubes out 6 months before Dobbs.

   6. I thought things were going to be pretty bad and they’ve been worse than I expected. I do not think we will have fair elections again (at least not anytime soon) and I do not at all trust “the midterms” to save us. IMO, the only way forward is for massive multi-state resistance to take place, including extreme steps like blocking the flow of tax revenue to the federal government.

   7. I do not feel competent to analyze this. I will say that internationally trump 1 was treated as an anomaly. This is not the case with trump 2. Now we know it is possible and countries have stated acting accordingly. On a personal level of course I still love my American family and friends and trey are devastated by what is happening. But our trust in the American institutions are gone and we will expect these things to happen

   8. The nobody told me it would be this bad people are progressives trying to avoid responsibility for the complete mess they made.

4. The Olympics opening ceremony is delightfully bonkers. Enjoy.

   1. I haven’t watched (yet) but looking forward to checking it out!

      On a more poignant note, I’m seeing many examples of family and friends truly showing up to support their Olympic athletes – purchasing tickets to Cortina last-minute, setting up watch parties, you name it (I’m a degree or two of separation away from a few athletes). I’ve been doing some reflecting on how to show up for family and friends and how to have a warm, loving household and I see so many positive examples here. It would be all too easy to say “I’ll just watch it on TV” or “I’ll send a congratulatory text.” It means so much more to show up in person (not saying that anyone who truly can’t do that is a bad person, of course – I mean for people who have the choice).

   2. Thanks for the reminder!

   3. It’s very Italian lol.
      My 7 year old said “why are they wearing sleeping bags?”

      1. I too would like a silver sleeping bag for walking around in!

   4. the coffee maker costumes were delightful!

5. PSA: if looking for nice warm pants, I can recommend 2 at Title 9: the “Crash Fleece Lined Wide Leg Pants” (I got long) and the “Valhalla Softshell Pants” (I got tall, which I don’t see as an option any more). The first ones are like the Athleta altitude pants used to be before they changed their fabric to be totally thin and flimsy, or even a bit thicker. The second ones are slightly loud when you walk (softshell) but they are literally the warmest pants I have ever had and also comfortable, so I don’t need to wear a blanket inside (I keep my house at 65). Highly recommend both!

   1. I also have the Crash Fleece pants but in the flared version — I like them a lot. I feel like they’re going to be prone to smelling though.

6. I’m looking for styling ideas to elevate a traditional navy paint suit so it doesn’t look too junior. It is currently the suit that fits my figure the best.

   1. Current color tops and really good jewelry, shoes and bag.

   2. I was just watching the Olympic opening ceremony and a navy paint suit seemed like the perfect bridge back to the real world.

   3. I don’t mean this to be rude, but is the “junior” concern just in your head? Otherwise it depends on your region—maroon silk shirt, saint james striped shirt, substantial 16-17 inch chain necklace, hair up, tidy nails, real shoes—loafers instead of regular flats.

   4. Avoid pairing it with white, red, cream, black or grey.

      Burgundy or burnt orange rather than red, light olive rather than white etc, pair with a color that is less conservative, and not super bright or clear.

      Add textures – if your navy has a sheen, don’t go satin, but maybe a fine knit top.

      1. Eh. I don’t know why you would rule black or gray. Black and navy looks great if it’s intentional. I like different shades of blue, too, or oxblood with navy. I think right now more muted colors look more modern but wear what you like and flatters your face. I just think you want to avoid anything too formal like a white or blue button down shirt with a suit if you’re trying to not look too “junior.”

      2. I disagree on your color preferences, which should depend more on what color is flattering around your face.

         Grey and black can be very nice, as well as white. You can use an interesting color punch with your shoes.

7. I do not feel competent to analyze this. I will say that internationally trump 1 was treated as an anomaly. This is not the case with trump 2. Now we know it is possible and countries have stated acting accordingly. On a personal level of course I still love my American family and friends and trey are devastated by what is happening. But our trust in the American institutions are gone and we will expect these things to happen

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