Women Are Relying On Plastic Surgeons To Fix Resting Bitch Face And It’s Not Cheap

I’m Jennifer and I have resting bitch face. I say that without shame and with full knowledge that I look pissed off and/or miserable pretty much 24/7, not because I am but because that’s just how my face is. I’ve accepted and am at peace with that, but some women think it’s such a huge problem that they’re willing to spend thousands on Botox to fix it.

  1. They’re not always going under the knife. While women with RBF are going to see plastic surgeons in record numbers, not all of them are getting serious surgical procedures where they have to be put under general anesthesia. Nevertheless, they are altering their faces, sometimes extremely.
  2. Several women per week are seeking out surgeons’ help. As Dr. David Shafer, a double board-certified plastic surgeon and medical director of Shafer Plastic Surgery & Laser Center in Midtown, told the New York Post, “This is actually a common request from patients — I get several each week. They may not always use the words ‘resting bitch face,’ but if I mention ‘RBF,’ they say, ‘exactly.'”
  3. To get a “pleasant resting look,” it all comes down to Botox. To “cure” women with RBF, clinicians use a combo of dermal fillers and Botox in procedures that take less than 20 minutes and cost anywhere from $500 to $5,000 depending on who you see. The effects should last for up to two years, at which point your RBF comes back, I suppose.
  4. Requests for this kind of procedure have doubled in the last year alone. Shafer tells the Post that cosmetic procedures have been “popularized by the Kardashians” and that many women with RBF are afraid of having it accentuated in selfies since you have to “look down at [your] phone” to take them. Obviously these women have never heard of holding your phone in the air for a more flattering angle!
  5. The effects are pretty profound. “The worse the ‘bitch face,’ the more effective the Botox,” Shafer said. “If you always look dumpy, or unfriendly … people are going to react to you differently.” Hope Davis is 42 and recently underwent procedures to remove her RBF, and she thinks it’s the best decision she’s ever made. “Nobody can quite put their finger on it, but they notice something’s different,” she explained. “People have definitely complimented me saying, ‘Oh you look so pretty and cute today.'” She added that the effects weren’t all about other people, saying, “I caught a glimpse of myself out of the corner of my eye, and it gave me a positive vibe because I looked happy. This whole time, [I was focused on] how I project to the world, but I wasn’t paying attention to how I project to myself.”

 

Jennifer Still is a writer and editor with more than 10 years of experience. The managing editor of Bolde, she has bylines in Vanity Fair, Business Insider, The New York Times, Glamour, Bon Appetit, and many more. You can follow her on Twitter @jenniferlstill
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