There are two camps of people in the world — people who still believe that over-the-counter undereye creams and concoctions can perform miracles, and then there’s me: a 33-year-old, very exhausted beauty writer who hasn’t had a full night’s sleep since she brought her baby home from the hospital over two years ago.
I have to add this — I’ve had dark eye circles for as long as I can remember. It happens when you have all this melanin magic going on and you’ve got deep set eyes — it’s just genetics. Of course, as I got older and collagen production slows down, my eyes looked like they went deeper into the hollows of my face, creating even darker circles.
And trust me when I tell you I’ve tried every single raved-about eye cream there is — I even had one shipped to me from Argentina once! Over the years, I’ve come to understand that dark eye circles happen to people beyond the cause of just genetics, and it include reasons like sun exposure, allergies, dehydration and lack of sleep.
A good friend taught me the deal about tear trough filler the first time I learned about it, and while her before-and-afters were convincing, it was pre-baby and I still had heaps of time on my hands and gravity still relatively on my side. A few years later, after researching about it, I talked to my ride-or-die dermatologist, Dr Rachel and it was go time.
Essentially, a series of injections are inserted under your eyes, allowing the filler to simulate the appearance of thicker fat pads beneath your skin. I’ve never had injections under my eyes, so I was very nervous, but a numbing cream was applied prior. A doctor who’s treating orbital hollowing needs to be highly skilled because there are heaps of risks, including swelling, or more dramatically, blindness.
Of course, I was in the safest hands’ of Dr Rachel’s who deftly marked out the areas that needed the fillers and injected them. I’m not even going to lie — it was a little painful, but no pain no gain, kids.
According to Dr Rachel’s blog, the aftercare for tear trough fillers are simple, “avoid facials, strenuous exercise, and forceful actions to the face so the fillers don’t end up migrating.” Safe to say, my two weeks doctor-mandated no workout drove me a little crazy, but after the slight bruising went away after a few days, I was a new person.
I didn’t wake up looking worse for wear, random cabbies didn’t tell me I look tired and best of all — I no longer felt like I needed undereye concealer to be in public. With my regular Q switch lasers and chemical peels, I was, in many ways, literally shedding my self-conscious state and made way for skin that I’m actually proud of. Who says you can’t buy happiness? It just involves a skilled dermatologist too, that’s all.
