Faces and Lasers

Hi {{first_name|friend}},

Who among us hasn’t spent some time in front of the mirror, tugging our skin back towards our temples to see what our faces would look like with a little more collagen and a little less gravitational pull? Who hasn’t wished that real life came with a touch-up-your-appearance filter? With the ubiquity of Zoom for remote work, and the ubiquity of Instagram face for anyone with a social media account, we increasingly judge our looks against synthetic standards, losing the plot on what human faces should look like when left at their factory settings.

We’d prefer to reject the premise that women’s visible aging is a disease to be treated, and let ourselves gray and wrinkle gracefully. But we’ve been steeping in this aesthetic tea for a lifetime, and it feels near-impossible to reject its mandate that we remain smooth-skinned and crease-free until the grave. Under these pressures, women do all sorts of unseemly stuff; injecting ourselves with our own blood, lifting our necks up with little marionette strings, getting facelifts at 40. In this week’s feature from Jenn Romolini’s substack, extended scenes (about life, beauty, and fashion after 40), she talks about her experience with a CO2 laser treatment that left her “so humbled by one’s own self-inflicted suffering that it changes the way you look at who you are today and the person you will go on to be.” Read on for that, plus a few recommendations for your weekend.

Bye,
Your friends at Gloria

It’s blessedly rare in this life to be so humbled by one’s own self-inflicted suffering that it changes the way you look at who you are today and the person you will go on to be. But after a full seven days healing from the social-media-popular face horror that is the CO2 laser treatment, I honestly don’t know if I will ever be the same.

For the uninitiated, CO2 laser resurfacing is an ablative or “wounding” treatment that shoots short pulses of light (laser beams!) into your skin. It’s the most aggressive of all of the laser treatments, a step to take if you’re self conscious about deep lines and don’t want to go under the knife, though it’s also often used in tandem with facelifts to address issues like texture and tone that surgery won’t.

The process essentially destroys/burns off/removes damaged top layers of your skin and heats them up enough to kick your body’s healing response into gear and stimulate the production of new collagen and elastin. It’s meant to lighten brown spots or hyperpigmentation, resurface scars, and tighten saggy (but not a lot of excess) skin.

CO2 laser treatments are somewhat customizable — the power can be turned up or down depending on a number of factors, including desired potency, depth, skin type, and the amount of downtime a patient is willing to endure. Perhaps it should have given me pause that the CO2 laser setting a couple of dials up from mine is considered painful enough to require general anesthesia. And yet! I chose to raw dog it with just a layer of numbing cream and, when offered, politely declined the technician’s suggested novocaine-like dental block citing a “high tolerance for pain.”

I was prepped for a good 45 minutes before this 20-minute treatment. Walked through a sheet of aftercare instructions, shown day-by-day photos of precisely what to expect. Despite these efforts, I wouldn’t say I was prepared.

The laser itself feels, and I swear this is not hyperbolic, like someone tapping a lit sparkler to your face, holding it there for a full beat, then moving it to an adjacent spot. It is hot. Each time the device makes contact with your skin you feel a crackly electric sting and a mild singe. When it hit the area between my lips and nose, I shed tears.

When I left the office, my face and neck appeared pink and dotted with colostrum-colored spots, not dissimilar to an infant’s cradle cap. I’m not going to torment anyone with details from each gruesome post-treatment stage of healing. I think the words “persistent oozing” (found on the aftercare sheet) are enough to guide you here.

I will say that, over the course of seven days, my husband/child/sister described the situation as:

“It looks like you were dragged behind a truck by your face.”

“It looks like someone put your face in a waffle iron”

“It looks like you were rendered by AI”

“Your skin looks like Little Edie’s in Grey Gardens”

“Is that a blood beard?”

If you’re interested in a CO2 laser treatment, it’s important to know that everything about my recovery was completely standard and normal. In fact, each time I texted the doctor’s office the requested daily selfie, I was met with, “looking great!”

There are at least 20 points of aftercare instructions for a procedure like this. I followed them all. To stave off infection, I laid sheets of white-vinegar-soaked gauze on my oozing visage and left them there for the prescribed 15 minutes, looking like a high school paper mâché project or maybe a mummy. I dabbed palms of Aquafor across rapidly forming scabs several times a day. I was careful not to scratch the (extremely) itchy lesions to prevent scarring. My face felt sticky and rough and burned 24-7. Even after taking Benadryl, I barely slept for three nights.

I’ve had enough dermatologists drill the importance of “collagen banking” into my brain that I usually try an in-office treatment along these lines once a year (Morpheus 8, Sofwave). This one was by far the most disgusting and painful. Unfortunately, it’s already apparent it was the most effective, too.

A week post-treatment, the sun damage and brown spots along the sides of my cheeks and forehead have all but faded. The wrinkles around my eyes are noticeably less deep, the fine lines on my cheeks are gone. Though the real collagen boost is supposed to show up in around six months — and even with the lingering redness and flakiness — my skin looks younger, smoother, and bouncier than it has in years.

What price beauty? I’m still not sure. I hated most every second of this last week, felt silly and foolish, depressed, more than a smidge embarrassed by and ashamed of my own vanity every damn day. This is how I’m choosing to spend my time?!

The technician told me their highest-profile clients (celebrities, though she obviously would not say who) come in for CO2 treatments at least every six months, that some ask for a lighter-setting CO2 every six weeks, that it’s a routine part of their “self care,” why their skin looks so great.

I currently cannot imagine enduring this kind of physical and emotional misery again in the name of self love or anything else, no matter what the outcome. Though maybe it’s like Glenn Close says in Dangerous Liaisons, “You'll find the shame is like the pain, you only feel it once.”

The Company Store’s Semi-Annual Sale is on, with 30% off, which is a good excuse to take a look at the state of your bed after a long summer. We’re refreshing a few of the basics: a down comforter, new sheets, and fresh pillows (because pillows do, in fact, have a lifespan).

There’s plenty more, too, including towels, quilts, blankets, and home decor. It’s a good time to replace the things you use every day, stock up for fall, or finally retire the towels and sheets that should probably have been retired a while ago. Shop the Semi-Annual Sale here for 30% off. #partner

TO WATCH Comedic geniuses Leslie Mann and Michelle Buteau join forces with the hot guy from Sex/Life in Spa Weekend. It’s from the makers of The Hangover, which should give you a sense for how chaotic and debaucherous it’ll get. If you’re not big on horror but will watch anything starring Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is in limited theatrical release.

TO SHOP Ann Taylor’s new arrivals are starting to look like fall, but there’s plenty you can wear while it’s still warm. We like this cool denim belted jacket, this denim dress, and this shirt dress that works for many seasons. See all the new arrivals here. #partner

TO LISTEN The audio documentary series Swingers, by BBC Radio Wales, tells the story of a woman who was pressured by her husband to participate in unwanted sexual encounters via a popular site for swingers. It’s a difficult but worthwhile listen that raises questions about the gray shades of consent, and calls to mind the bravery of French survivor Gisèle Pelicot.

TO READ If you’re interested in being up on the latest BookTok drama, you’re going to need to get your hands on Rachel Cusk’s latest novel, The Life of M, which drops next week. Is it a thinly veiled portrait of Natalie Portman? A general commentary on celebrity? Decide for yourself.

When we say someone looks “ageless,” what are we really saying? • “Blood tests to predict Alzheimer’s are causing confusion and distress.” • How Deb Perelman’s kept recipe blog Smitten Kitchen alive for 20 years. • Exploring the frenzy around full-body scans. • Fashion brands are cutting back on sizes above an XL, but why?

_{*Gloria may receive an affiliate commission on purchases made through our newsletter.}