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For as long as I can remember, I’ve hated my eyelids. More specifically, I’ve hated my left eyelid. My right one is just fine.
My uncle had a droopy left eyelid, and my mother has always been fond of sharing the fact that I got this — technically called amblyopia — from him. Not that it was a good thing, for sure. It was a constant reminder that something in my face needed fixing.
To be fair, I wouldn’t have noticed my droopy eyelid without the repeated comments on it. I’ve never been too bothered about the way I look, but that droopy eyelid sure had some hold on my family.
Eyelid surgery — blepharoplasty — has been suggested multiple times. A date was set. I was to finally fix my lazy eye the summer between high school and college, which, my mother informed me, would give me a fresh start. No one would ever know that I used to have a droopy eye.
During a blepharoplasty, a surgeon cuts the fold of the eyelid, removes some skin or muscle or fat, and sews you up again. After the surgery, I’d have to sleep with my head raised, I would need dark sunglasses for a little while and I would have to avoid doing anything strenuous that could slow my recovery.
I’ve always been a fan of plastic surgery. If someone is unhappy with the way they look, and a little cutting and dicing would help, then I’m all for it. At the same time, I haven’t liked the results I’ve seen. From the disfigured housewives on Bravo to those with ongoing health problems related to their plastic surgery, I’ve never been super impressed.
So, I decided to try other options before bringing in the big doctors. I spent too many hours Googling “how to fix droopy eyelids without surgery.” My options included Botox, hyaluronic acid fillers, eye exercises and cold compresses.
I tried the last two: pressing my finger on my eyelid to manually fix it (major fail), and slicing cucumbers like a boss, applying them to my eyelids as if I were a chopped salad. Needless to say, these attempted fixes did nothing but make me smell like a patch of freshly cut grass. Not bad, but not my top choice either. My droopy eyelid refused to be awakened, and surgery was back on the table.
We were inching closer to my high school graduation, and all I could think about was the upcoming plastic surgery. I have a fear of blood, and the fact that there would be a scalpel so close to my eyeball wasn’t super reassuring. Sure, I understood that it was a minor procedure. But there would be blood and knives and recovery involved.
At the last minute (literally the day before), I backed out of the surgery. Why did I need to put myself through this if I wasn’t at all concerned about the state of my eyelid?
Should I go through with it to make my family happy that my eyelids were finally normal? That word kept echoing in my mind — normal. But whose version of normal was I chasing?
There’s so much pressure on women and girls to fix themselves, and it’s starting younger and younger. The “get ready with me” videos running rampant on TikTok show girls as young as 7 applying products and makeup to cover up any perceived blemishes or imperfections. I understand how something so seemingly harmless can snowball into a lifelong insecurity — especially when women are conditioned to believe that our faces need constant fixing and correcting just to be acceptable to passing eyes.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the droopy eyelid wasn’t actually the problem. It was the narrative I had inherited, one that told me this small flaw defined me. These days, I still catch glimpses of it in photos and mirrors, and yeah, it’s there. But so am I. Whole, uncut and fine just as I am. Maybe not perfect — but perfectly mine.
Is there a body part that you feel bad about? Let us know in the comments below.
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Follow Article Topics: Beauty