I got lip fillers. Afterwards, I bruised and got weird little bumps I worried would take months to go away. 

I get the fillers to control my body, to prove that I can force it into a shape I find aesthetically appealing. But what does it say that, in the act of getting these fillers, I actually trigger the opposite effect than the one I desire? Thanks to the fillers, now I end up with bruises that are outside of my control, embarrassing ugly little bumps that surely do not reflect how I want my body to look. alana the ugly duck(ling) lips… ughhhh… 

Of course the bruises are expected to fade, the bumps, fingers crossed, go away; these are a short-term side effect I trade-off for the fuller lip look, a little dukkha hump I accept to get me to what I imagine will be the sukkha of a perfect pout. A pout that, ironically, is also temporary (6 to 9 months says the dermatologist), just a little longer lasting than the side effects. I hope. 

For every cosmetic procedure, I dismiss the side effects. I ignore, I normalize, I just put on a little cover-up and move on. But why ignore this aspect of cosmetic procedures that clearly tells me something: Even in the act of trying to force, mould, control, the signs of the futility of this effort are manifest. As soon as the needle slides into my lips, and the bluish bumps start to form, the truth I don’t control the lips is on full display.

The truth that these lips, that I claim and identify with, are 4e lips that behave like every other 4e lip is abundantly clear. 

The fact that, these 4e lips, which I have attached so much meaning to, fell into states I find ugly/ don’t feel represent me, to begin with prove this body doesn’t reflect me, or who I am. All I can do is react to the lips, to the body, to the world -- fillers and patches – all of which belie the true ‘problem’ that the world won’t abide by my imagination of what it is or what it should be. All I can do is wiggle within the confines I am delt. Only a fool can pretend this is mastery.

Lips are just 4 e objects, they will become plumper when a gel is injected, they will also bruise when pierced with a needle. This is a normal way that 4e lips respond to 4e stimulus. I use a particular look, a 4e arrangement to define myself, reflect myself, prove something about my mastery of my body, my life, this world. But does a 4e object doing what any 4e object does --with aspects I find appealing and aspects I find unappealing --really prove or say anything about me? How can it? 

It doesn’t prove I am special --this is how any 4e lip responds. This doesn't prove my control, duh, bruises. It doesn't prove anything about my nature as master of a body-look. It only proves the nature of the 4e lips in reaction to 4e gel and a 4e needle. Just because I find the short-term results displeasing, the long-term results pleasing, does that say anything about me other than my arbitrary beliefs --3s and 4s --that give rise to certain forms registering as pleasurable? Where is the identity in that? What does it prove other than my preferences and pleasures and the fact that sometimes 4 e objects in this world pass through states that align with those preferences and pleasures. Other times --more frequent times -- they pass through states I find displeasurable.

Which brings me to the fact that if I zoom outwards it is clear that the reason I am in this situation in the first place of needing to fill my aging, wrinkling, wizen lips, is that this body --against my will, my preferences, my self-imagination -- is shifting into arrangements I find displeasurable. I feel such a sense of accomplishment, victory, when I look in the mirror and I see a thin alana, a pretty alana, a full-lipped alana. I weigh the results of my efforts to diet and primp and inject, and I am proud. But needing to get fillers should prove my defeat, not victory; it is the result of my inability to stop the ravishes of age and time, my inability to keep this form I claim into shifting into unpleasant states in the first place. 

Plus, even if I can imagine this as a victory, it is a pyrrhic one at best --like a tent continually collapsing in the wind -- all I need to do is wait and the lips deflate again. 

Why do I want these plump lips in the first place? It is my arbitrary notion of what is beautiful. Why do I want to be beautiful? It is how I see myself, an arbitrarily chosen 'essential' trait that reflects the Alana I imagine myself to be. 

All of us try to build identity by trying to shape the world (trying is the operative word in this sentence): A musician shapes sounds, a writer stories, a politician their civic body, a parent their children, etc . A beautiful body represents me, it is the physical manifestation of my abstract sense of identity. It is one of the things alana sees as critical to shape.  And if I can’t even shape this one, most intimate object, what does that prove about me? That’s the dumb question I ask myself, staring in the mirror at sunken lips, a sagging face, feeling low and defeated. That’s the question that keeps me trying to “solve” the problem of fading beauty, to primp and lip plump. 

The smart questions however are these: Is there any hope I can shape the world, that it will ultimately bow to my efforts? 

Why should I place so much value in the small, temporary, influence I have – sure someone can smack at the waves on a beach with a stick, sure some of them will break a few seconds short of the shore, but is this really making any meaningful impact on the ocean? 

Why should I value the shapes I make? Does this body, or any shape, really say anything about me? Do 4e objects, marching through various states/shapes, brought about by shifting arrangements of the elements, actually reflect any meaning at all? Better yet the meaning ‘alana’? Is there identity in conditioned physical clumps? 

And what can I glean from the fact that the shapes I choose to value, and the meaning I assign them, are totally arbitrary? There was an experiment where kids were told those with brown eyes were smart and blue eyes dumb, then the kids started believing it, brown eyed kids bullied blue eyed peers, blue eyed kids developed inferiority complexes. The trait of eye color is real, but the trait was arbitrarily given some meaning it clearly doesn’t have. And yet, the children acted-out based on the belief alone. Am I similarly deluded by the meaning I have assigned arbitrary traits/ arrangements of rupa?

And of course, what’s the cost of my inevitable failure to shape the world, to shape even just a single body in it? Am I really going to find sukkha somewhere in my endless struggle to create and maintain arbitrarily chosen arrangements, just for them to come crashing down and me needing to start anew. Work to build, to tend, sorry to lose, work to build again. Dukkha. 

Anyway, what is beauty-what is any shape we make? It is just a particular state, an arrangement, that 4e objects (and nama too) pass through for a time. Think of a flower -- beauty is just the peak of the flower arrangement, plus some number of clicks of the arrangements before and after peak state. A green bud, not beautiful. A rotting wrinkled petal, a wizen stalk, not beautiful. If beauty is just a state can it bestow an identity? Worse – If I choose an alana body to identify with, to claim as representative of me, how royally fucked am I that I don’t even want to identify with all of its states? Only the peak ones will do…

And so, I ice my lips. I hope the swelling goes down, the lumps disappear. For the latest slug of pain, I hopefully get 6 to 9 months of worrying about my next biggest problem, some other aspect of this body’s shape –this life’s shape -- that blatantly defies my will. Like a scarlet letter testifying to me, to the world, of my failures to keep this aging, decaying lump of flesh in line.