People who aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of Botox and cosmetic fillers invariably seem to picture someone from Real Housewives when their partner says they want to get them themselves. Guys, in particular, imagine their wives or girlfriends will come home from the med spa a new, pillow-faced person incapable of expressing emotion, and therefore don’t want them to get work done at all.
In reality, though, most of these guys probably wouldn’t even notice the difference. In fact, injectables can be so subtle that their partners could get by without telling them they had them, as many women on TikTok claim to do. Instead of informing their husbands or boyfriends about their upcoming Juvederm appointment, they tell them they’re getting a facial and leave it at that.
On TikTok, there are dozens of videos from both estheticians and patients discussing how “getting a facial” is a catchall term used to confuse partners when someone is really getting fillers or Botox. In one such video from @annniedemattio, she shows herself waving goodbye to her boyfriend after telling him she’s headed out for a facial, before revealing herself getting filler for her lips. Similarly, in real life, some women report using the excuse of going to the dentist or dermatologist.
“I’ve been getting lip fillers for ages, and my partner has never had any idea,” an anonymous woman tells me via Twitter. “He even actively says things like, ‘I’m so glad you don’t have any Botox or injections. After COVID lockdowns, I really wanted to go in and get my lips touched up, but he wasn’t going out much, so I told him I was having something done at the dentist and my face might be swollen. He never questioned it or seemed to notice that the swelling was entirely in my lower lip.”
The practitioners themselves discuss this, too. “Things I tell my husband,” a video by @injectorali reads, listing out what she says to her husband versus the truth of the matter. In it, she says she tells him, “I just got a facial” when actually she has a face full of Botox and Dysport. She also tells him she only pays “around $250” for it, when in reality, she spends around 10 times that.
As the name @injectorali suggests, this particular creator is an aesthetic nurse who specializes in performing these procedures. With that in mind, her video is likely just a joke, but several other nurses and doctors who offer cosmetic injections have made similar videos about how their clients tell their partners they’re just getting a facial, too. In the comments, other women affirm that they’re also doing this IRL, and that their husbands don’t notice (or at very least, just don’t say anything). What many women seem to highlight, though, isn’t just that they don’t want their partners to know that they’re getting something done that might make them “unnatural,” but that they don’t want them to know exactly how much they’re spending.
“My husband and I have an understanding: I cut all prices by about 30-40 percent, he pretends like he doesn’t know I do this,” one woman commented on @injectorali’s video. That said, others wrote about having supportive husbands who aren’t bothered by the injections or the cost, or that they pay for the injections with their own money. “Mine asked me how much my maintenance costs and I asked him why did he care ‘cause he don’t pay for it,” another woman explained. “We don’t talk about it anymore.”
Again, given that these are all public videos and many are made by actual practitioners, much of the “getting a facial” line is in jest. Still, the joke points to a common theme: The work they’re getting done is subtle enough that it probably could pass for “just a facial” among people who don’t know any better, highlighting how their opposition to fillers might be ill-informed.
Maybe she can’t raise her eyebrows as high as before, but she’s probably still a far cry from the fully frozen look that men seem to be afraid of.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
