In my junior year of high school, I was sitting in a spin class when I had an epiphany. 

In the middle of the class, I looked to my left, and the girl next to me had smooth hair and a perfect nose, and I was so f*cking jealous. TBH, the frizzy hair was not that big of a deal to me because I had Keratin scheduled the next week—it was the nose that pissed me off because no matter what Kardashian-Jenner bullsh*t contour tip I tried, I was always going to have a f*cking beak on my face.

Usually, I’m really against workout instructors trying to be super inspirational, but I guess that day when the teacher tried to convince me that I truly was in charge of my own destiny, something changed inside of me. I realized that it wasn’t like there was nothing to do about my nose—helloooo plastic surgery. 

That wasn’t the first time I’d thought about getting a nose job. From the boy who told me I looked like a toucan in my eighth-grade art class, to the one who didn’t slow dance with me at a bat mitzvah in seventh-grade because I was “kinda cute but had a weird nose,” I definitely had some pent-up insecurities. 

It got to the point where I would spend hours watching makeup videos on YouTube trying to contour my nose and getting pissed off because it only made it look more obvious. At some point in ninth or tenth grade, I started covering my nose in pictures, opting for a pose that I thought looked cute or candid but was just there to mask (what I saw as) the enormous trumpet on my face. 

So, my eventual nose job was always pretty much always an unspoken thing. When I came home and told my parents that it was time, they weren’t exactly surprised. It was not like they encouraged me to get one before I expressed interest, but a nose job was pretty much always on the table.

The fact that I had a nose job isn’t new or revolutionary information to my friends—it’s like my number one personality trait (having a nut allergy comes in as a close second). My relationship with my nose has always been a huge part of my life, more so before my surgery than now, and the insecurity it caused me was incredibly consuming.

While I literally regret nothing about the decision I made, there definitely are some things I wish I looked into and knew before I had the surgery. Some of these seem pretty intuitive, but trust me, when you’re on whatever pain med your doctor gives you, and you have a weird pad thing under your nose, you aren’t thinking rationally. Whatever, you live, and you learn… right? Here’s what I learned from getting my nose job that I wish I’d known beforehand.

It’s Not Going to Be What You Expect 

It’s not like in that episode of Glee when Rachel Berry brought Quinn to the plastic surgeon to show him what she wanted to look like. My doctor actually didn’t really take my input and didn’t show me a picture of my future self that I could have made on FaceTune. 

In so many words, my surgeon (WHOM I LOVE) said to me, “if you really have a vision that you’re committed to, you can show me, but I’m basically just going to balance out your features. You’re not going to look like a whole new person.” At the time, I might have wanted that, but he was totally right—I just needed to trust him. He also asked me if I wanted a chin surgery because I guess those normally go hand-in-hand, and to that, I said thanks, but no thanks. 

There Is No ‘Right Reason’ To Get Plastic Surgery

TBH: I got a nose job because I was insecure. I was aware that my insecurity made me quite bitchy intolerable. I didn’t like how I looked, and I really didn’t like how I projected that onto other people. 

Okay, even that wasn’t completely honest. While my insecurity was the rationale for me thinking about the potential of having a nose job, that isn’t why I pulled the trigger. As my surgery date grew closer, and I let more of my friends in the loop, I started becoming more aware that the people in my life didn’t think I would go through with it.  

So, yeah, my rationale for actually getting on the operating table and actually going through with my surgery was the same rational frat guys use when they jump off a roof onto a folding table: “do it b*tch, you won’t.” 

In all seriousness, I don’t regret getting my nose job. I wouldn’t change a thing about the way I approached it, but I do wish I treated this life-altering decision with a little more gravity. There really are no wrong answers or justifications for getting plastic surgery (but, like, maybe the “do it, you won’t” thing wasn’t my best call).

Okay, I lied. There is one wrong answer: your reason to get plastic surgery should not be that you think it will fix everything in your life. Not to be gross and cliche, but plastic surgery should never be the answer to finding happiness, but it can be something that helps you get there.

Recovery Might Not Be the Hardest Part

Everyone’s process is different, but the surgery itself and my recovery weren’t the hardest parts of my nose job experience. Recovery wasn’t like a trip to the spa, I had to go back to the ER having to go on my first night due to aggressive bleeding, and I went to my first ever OB-GYN appointment with my cast still on. That said, it wasn’t awful. It was comparable to, like, an especially bad hangover. 

The hardest parts were making the decision to go through with it, and the day I got my cast off. As ridiculous as it may sound, I assumed that the minute I looked in the mirror with all the surgical tape and packing off of my face, I would look hot as sh*t and feel, like, complete. This was not the case.  

I was swollen, there was blood caked on parts of my face I hadn’t seen in a week, and I couldn’t blow my nose. The most shocking thing about looking in the mirror was that I couldn’t smile. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but some people get minor temporary nerve damage. So, when you smile, you end up looking like someone who is being forced to smile in a ransom video to prove they are alive and well. 

I started my senior year of high school a week after I got my cast off. Truthfully, I was mortified. I felt as though I went through all of my internal debate about the surgery, pain, and discomfort for nothing. It felt like everyone knew that I was getting a nose job, but I had nothing to show for it. 

But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was my perfect side profile. It turns out that you have to wait for the swelling to go down and the nerves to heal before you really get a sense of what you’ll look like. While it felt like months before this happened, it was really only a few weeks, and I came out the other side looking and feeling really good. 

There’s No Right Narrative

There’s no right and wrong reason to have your nose done, and there is no right or wrong thing to tell people about why you got it done. But, just a tip, you might want to keep it consistent. 

Initially, there were plenty of people who realized I had surgery on their own, and, feeling a little uncomfortable with my decision to have it done, I lied to them. Most frequently, I told people I wasn’t close with that I had a deviated septum. If that’s what you want to do, there is nothing wrong with fudging the truth a little to create a narrative you are comfortable with, but lying just made me feel more insecure. Like, we all know how believable it is when celebs claim they “fixed a deviated septum”. Blaming my nose job on a fake problem just brought about more feelings of insecurity (can they tell I’m full of sh*t?) and shame (for not owning my decision).

Now, I’m more vocal about my experience. (I mean, obviously, I’m writing an article about it.) Partly because of my personality and partly because of the circumstances that contributed to my decision. I go to college close to 1,000 miles away from my high school, where I’m the only one from my graduating class. I got to have a fresh start and reinvent parts of myself—one of those being the way I talked about my surgery.

Going through with my nose job made me a more confident and better person, but as I said, those changes didn’t happen overnight. I’d like to think that the 21-year-old version of myself is above falling victim to stigmas against plastic surgery and hope that I would be more confident in owning my decision today. 

At the end of the day, I would undoubtedly do it again, but I wish I handled it differently. I literally hate people who talk about their *journeys, * but that’s what this was for me. For some people, getting a nose job stops being important as soon as your black eyes and swelling are no longer visible. For me, it took a little longer, but I came out the other side just fine.  

The most important lesson that my nose job taught me was that it didn’t make me superficial or stupid to want to like how I looked. We don’t call people who dye their hair or start working out those things. I think that it’s probably time to stop treating people who get plastic surgery like they aren’t deep or smart or confident.  

In the meantime, there’s a lot of satisfaction to be gained from the guy who called me and my “big ass nose” ugly at camp one summer thinking that I’m hot now. 

Images: Max Andrey / Unsplash; Giphy (2)

It’s 2019, so we’re not going to pretend anymore that getting plastic surgery is some kind of weird taboo that women do in dark rooms on their 40th birthday. Embracing the chance to change something on your body that you feel insecure or uncomfortable with is f*cking awesome, and stigmas are not. And if you’re going to do something, it’s better to have all the information than to go in blind because you were too embarrassed to do research and end up with a botched procedure, right? Right. That’s why we chatted with Dr. Gary Linkov, a Facial Plastic Surgeon from New York to answer all your questions about preventative, non-surgical, and surgical facial procedures.

Which Facial Procedures Are Most Popular?

Nonsurgical: Botox, Filler, Chemical Peel

Surgical: Rhinoplasty (nose job), facelift, blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery), and lip lifts are growing in popularity

When Should You Start Non-Surgical Preventative Treatments?

Although rumours and Instagram ads may suggest otherwise, Dr. Linkov believes that the only truly preventative strategy is botox. He’s had clients who start as young as their early 20s, ranging to about late 20s to early 30s. So if you’re still a child and scared of needles like me, there’s no need to panic. You can still prevent those wrinkles in due time.

How Do You Know If You’re Overdoing It?

It’s not hard to spot an overkill face (we’re looking at you, Tori Spelling), but when you’re in the heat of it, how do you know if you’ve gone overboard? Dr. Linkov says that with Botox, you’re too far once you’ve lost the ability to show emotions through facial expressions and have difficulty animating your face. This low-key sounds like a really good thing that I’d 100% be down for, but it doesn’t look so cute.

In terms of filler, you want to avoid anything that looks disproportionate to the rest of your face. Like, you can legitimately pick anyone from the cast of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and go as far in the opposite direction as possible. The facial procedures are meant to enhance what is already there, not build cheeks from silicone. For lips specifically, you want to avoid an anterior projection that is unnatural, aka you don’t want to look like you’re making the duck face all the time (unless that’s your strategy, then go for it).   

How Do You Fix Botched Work?

In his line of work, Dr. Linkov has seen plenty of botched faces. He says the most common type of corrections he performs for non-surgical procedures has to do with too much filler being injected or filler being injected in the wrong place. In that case, he needs to dissolve all the filler and start from scratch.

For surgical facial procedures, rhinoplasty is often one that needs correction. Sometimes too much cartilage is removed during the initial surgery, causing the nose to lose shape or sink in. Or Maybe Becca from Long Island got her nose job the summer before college and did way too much coke so now the bridge of her nose is collapsing. But like who really knows, we all started with a deviated septum anyway, right?

How Do Patients Decide The Best Course Of Treatment?

A lot of what Dr. Linkov spends his time doing is actually talking to patients and truly understanding their concerns. He likes to get a background on what procedures they’ve done prior to coming to see him, as well as their tolerance for various intensities of treatments. It’s also vital that Dr. Linkov has time to properly analyze a client’s face to choose the right method of approach. The bottom line is your surgeon should work with you, not for you, to help determine the best way to achieve what you’re looking for.   

When Is The Best Time To Get A Facelift?

Dr. Linkov suggests getting a facelift once the jowls start to show *shivers* and there is some heaviness forming in the neck. Usually, this happens in the mid to late 40s for most women, but it can be later for some lucky betches. The trick, he says, is to do the facelift while the underlying muscle still has good integrity and strength. If you try to get a lift too late, the muscle will have already thinned out and will not support a transformative lift.

Do Facial Gyms Help Wrinkle Prevention?

So apparently taking a spa day to have someone smack your face doesn’t count as going to the gym. Shame. Dr. Linkov says there is very little data to show that facial gyms and wrinkle-prevention exercises actually do anything. In fact, strengthening muscles may even promote wrinkles, since wrinkles are from the activity of the skin’s underlying musculature. It’s fine, you tried.

Who Would Preventative Treatments NOT Be Beneficial For?

If you have limited wrinkles (even when you smile or do a double chin or whatever weird sh*t Snapchat prompts you to do) you don’t actually need preventative botox. Lucky. Fillers, on the other hand, are never really 100% preventative, according to Dr. Linkov, so no one should be trying that out before they want to commit to it.   

How Do You Choose A Location And Person?

While these procedures can be pricey, there’s no benefit in trying to cut costs. Dr. Linkov says a lot of people often hunt for the best price per unit of Botox or syringe of filler, but those are also the faces that get botched and have to end up paying more for corrections in the future. Dr. Linkov instead strongly recommends picking a doctor by their experience to treat the face and maintain safety as their top priority. Some treatments can have side effects that range from mild to more severe, so having someone who knows what they’re doing and can do it well is very important. He also suggests that you make sure your injector has the appropriate antidotes, such as hyaluronidase for fillers, and to ask what type of filler is being injected.

What Are Typical Price Points For These Procedures?

Botox: Anywhere from $10-25 per unit or $200-500 per area
Filler: $500-1000 per syringe
Chemical Peel: $200-300 per treatment
Rhinoplasty: $9000-15,000+
Facelift: $10,000-20,000+

Is There Any Downtime?

Botox: Rarely any downtime
Filler: Can have bruising or swelling for up to two weeks, but usually one to two days of downtime
Chemical Peel: Depends on the intensity of the peel, but about one week
Rhinoplasty, Facelift, Liplift: One to two weeks of downtime

What Are The Side Effects?

Botox: Paralysis of neighboring muscles, bruising (rarer)
Filler: Bruising, swelling, vascular occlusion (including skin changes, or in rare cases, blindness)
Chemical Peel: Scarring, skin pigmentation changes
Rhinoplasty: Swelling, bruising, breathing issues, cosmetic deformities
Facelift: Scarring, bleeding, facial nerve damage
Liplift: Scarring

If you want to learn more about Dr. Linkov and the procedures he specializes in, feel free to check out his website. To keep up with his daily surgical antics you can follow him on Instagram.

Images: Giphy (2) 

Today is Gigi Hadid’s 24th birthday, and as usual, we’re celebrating by doing a deep dive into her entire life. Well, not really. To be honest, Gigi’s personal life isn’t that exciting, because it mostly just consists of me googling to see if she and Zayn are still together every few months. (I’ll save you 30 seconds: they’re not together right now.) Instead, today let’s focus on Gigi’s best asset—her face. Gigi Hadid is obviously like, superhuman levels of gorgeous, but how much of that beauty is natural? Let’s examine the evidence and see whether the elder Hadid sister has gone under the knife.

Gigi Hadid is still so young, but she’s been in the spotlight for a long time. I remember her fondly from the early days of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, when she was an up-and-coming model being lectured by her mom about why she needed to eat salad every day. Nothing problematic here! But Gigi Hadid actually got her start as a model way before that, doing campaigns for Guess when she was just two years old. Casual.

So Gigi was obviously cute AF when she was a little kid, but I’m not going to analyze what her face looked like when she was a toddler. Sorry, but I don’t want to have “Gigi Hadid little girl” in my Google search history. I’m too young to go to jail. Instead, let’s start with Gigi Hadid’s first-ever post on Instagram, from November 2011.

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V's 1st BDay!!

A post shared by Gigi Hadid (@gigihadid) on Nov 13, 2011 at 12:51pm PST

Gigi’s modeling career was already beginning to take off when this photo was taken, but she looks so fresh-faced and natural. She was 16 at the time, and while she was obviously a pretty girl, she looked more like the average hot girl at your high school than anyone who’s ever been on a CW show. Let’s start by establishing that Gigi Hadid has naturally beautiful features. Her big blue eyes are stunning, and she’s always had great bone structure. For today’s purposes, let’s focus on two specific areas: her lips and her nose.

Gigi has full, pillowy lips, so they’re often a topic of conversation when it comes to cosmetic adjustments. Lip fillers are one of the biggest beauty fads right now, and honestly, I bet more than half of the top models and celebrities have dipped a toe (or a lip) in the Restylane pool. But not Gigi. I feel very confident in saying that she has not had lip fillers. I know I said I wasn’t going to analyze her face when she was a child, but I mean, look at her lips in this photo:

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= current mood bc don't get to dress up this year…. Throwback to lil G as Toy Story's Jessie! ??

A post shared by Gigi Hadid (@gigihadid) on Oct 31, 2014 at 8:33am PDT

First of all, love the costume. But mainly, those lips! Unless Yolanda was making some seriously questionable parenting decisions, these lips look 100% natural. Yes, I’m jealous, but there’s a reason Gigi’s been on like, 74 Vogue covers, while the only thing I’ve been on the cover of is my mom’s photo albums. I really hope Gigi never touches her lips, because I would honestly cry if I saw her with Instagram model trout pout.

Moving on, we really need to discuss Gigi Hadid’s nose. While the lips were a pretty easy call to make, the nose has really given me some sleepless nights. Some people are absolutely certain that Gigi got a nose job, but I’m really not so sure.

Let’s take a look at this side-by-side. The photo on the left is from September 2014, while the photo on the right is from February 2019.

Obviously, Gigi looks pretty different in the two photos. But I don’t think it’s because she had a lot of work done. Instead, I think most of the changes can be attributed to makeup, skin tone, and getting older. She’s lost some of her baby fat over the years, giving her cheeks and jaw a more chiseled look. She’s also learned that sometimes, less is more when it comes to fake tan. Paler skin makes her features more striking, allowing the best parts of her face to really pop.

But let’s get back to the nose. For years, Gigi Hadid has been a big fan of using contouring and strobing techniques on her nose. This, I think, is the main reason for the change in appearance. For example, look at this photo of Gigi from last year’s Met Gala:

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love you my friends @laurapolko @patrickta, creating with you is a dream 🙂 ? #metgala

A post shared by Gigi Hadid (@gigihadid) on May 8, 2018 at 10:40am PDT

This is one of my favorite Gigi Hadid hair and makeup moments ever, and the generous amount of highlighter used on her nose really changes her entire look. Seriously, she looks like an alien sent to kill us all because we’re so ugly. But that’s not actually what her nose looks like. Here’s a magazine cover from July 2018, meaning it was probably shot around the same time the Met Gala took place:

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BUNNY LOVE ?? Played dress-up for @thelovemagazine’s 10th birthday cover ?????☁️ by the amazing @mikaeljansson & @kegrand x thank you ! can’t wait to share this story x (ps. LOVE you @bitton)

A post shared by Gigi Hadid (@gigihadid) on Jul 27, 2018 at 4:41pm PDT

THAT’S Gigi’s nose! Gigi doesn’t have a large nose by any means, but it’s not insanely narrow or tiny like the contouring can make it appear. Damn, the devil works hard, but Gigi’s makeup artist works harder. And honestly, because of all the crazy makeup tricks she can use, I think it would be really silly for Gigi to get a nose job. She obviously doesn’t need it, and she could easily end up looking crazy. Her sister Bella has mostly had tasteful work done, but she still looks way less natural than Gigi.

So happy birthday Gigi Hadid, and congratulations on your lack of plastic surgery, at least as far as I, an untrained expert, can tell. Am I wrong? Do you think Gigi’s been under the knife? Sound off in the comments!

Images: Shutterstock (3); @gigihadid / Instagram (4)

Society f*cking sucks (especially these days) but when it comes to beauty, it’s particularly awful. Women are held to insanely high standards of beauty and asked to be literally flawless while also not doing a single thing to achieve that. So, we had Dr. Devgan, the top female plastic surgeon in New York on our Diet Starts Tomorrow podcast to discuss and de-stigmatize plastic surgery. Along with being a mother of six, Dr. Devgan is the CEO of her own company called Scientific Beauty and the Chief Medical Officer at Real Self, so she’s like totally legit. Here are some takeaways from our chat with Dr. Devgan, but for the full scoop, you’ll have to listen to the episode below.

• Most people who come to Dr. Devgan for plastic surgery generally like themselves and have confidence, but just want a bit of a change
• Dr. Devgan’s patients are 85% female and 15% male, but the male percentage is growing
• 10% of people who see a plastic surgeon have body dysmorphic disorder, so it’s important to screen for that
• People don’t actually bring in celebrity photos to recreate their faces, because that’s really f*cking creepy, but you can totally bring inspiration photos of features you like
• Age is beauty, according to Dr. Devgan—when you hit 35-40 your face has natural contour and elegance
• Snapchat Dysmorphia is REAL and people literally want to become their filters. 
• Dr. Devgan tells us, “It’s time to let women and men dictate their own choices about their own bodies with a little bit more dignity, privacy, and respect”
• The average millennial is going to take 30,000 selfies in a year
• What to look for in a plastic surgeon and what types of photos to ask to see
• Jade rollers don’t actually work and you’re wasting your money and wrist strength
• Why Dr. Devgan is also not a fan of thread lifts and cool sculpting

Listen to Dr. Devgan’s full episode of Diet Starts Tomorrow below.

For career advice from Dr. Devgan, listen to our When’s Happy Hour podcast as well (and order our book while you’re at it).

Thanks to skinny model betches like Gigi and Kendall taking over our fucking lives, people will practically do anything to make themselves more attractive. Vaginal steaming? Sure. Eyebrow tattoos aka microblading? Yup. Suctioning a cup to my lips because Kylie Jenner refused to admit she’d had injections? Sign me the fuck up. Well now there’s a new insane, painful beauty trend on the rise. Legitimate surgery to get those two little back dimples above your ass. Jesus fucking Christ, how is this a thing?

A Definitive Ranking Of The Victoria’s Secret Models

Just in case going under the knife for back dimples that nobody even fucking notices wasn’t ridiculous enough, the surgery can cost up to five grand. This has got to be the stupidest waste of money since the waist trainer. Look, when I was in middle school I was super jealous of my BFF Christina who had the back dimple thing going on, but now, who gives a fuck? How about you spend that money on a personal trainer and get the entire body of a Victoria’s Secret model instead? Seems like a better investment. Some people have said they’re hereditary so if you want them, you’ll have to pay up. But others say every girl has them; it’s just a matter of if you’re skinny enough for them to show. I could have fucking told you that. Like, I have abs under there somewhere. I’m sure of it.

The only thing back dimples have going for them is that people with them are supposedly have better orgasms because they have better circulation in their pelvis?? IDK. Sounds like bullshit to me. Especially if you’re buying them and they’re not actually there. But I’m not stupid enough to dish out $5K for this so I guess I’ll have to continue on living my sad, mediocre-orgasm-having existence and never know for sure.