Valerie Bertinelli has been open about her struggle with weight and body image for many years. She’s spoken about realizing that she can’t find happiness just from losing weight, and she’s had her fair share of body-shamers on the internet. She’s responded to trolls in the past and called them out for being petty and cruel. Recently someone commented on one of Valerie’s TikToks, “the Botox looks great,” which was definitely meant as a snarky comment. So Valerie made a TikTok where she talked about why that type of comment hurts, and detailed her own experience with Botox. She had it before, but she didn’t like how it turned out. Valerie comes across so genuine and sweet, it just makes me more annoyed that people are coming at her for the apparent crime of aging as a 62-year-old woman.

The “One Day at a Time” alum posted a TikTok Sunday in response to a user who commented “The Botox looks great” on one of her prior videos.

The Food Network star interpreted the comment as sarcasm, but decided to switch gears by responding to the mockery with mindfulness.

“I know you didn’t mean that as a compliment, but let’s talk about it, shall we?” Bertinelli began. “I have tried Botox … I hated it.”

The “Hot in Cleveland” star then pulled up a photo of herself from six years ago when she did get Botox, and explained that the procedure “changed the shape of my eyebrows” resulting in her not recognizing her own face.

“What I thought it was going to do was help me with my genetically puffy eyes,” Bertinelli explained. “They’ve always annoyed me. I’ve always wanted those deep-set eyes. Don’t have ’em. Never going to get ’em. So, just live with it.”

But then Bertinelli got to the real reason why she wanted to talk about the comment.

“Because you’re trying to shame me, and you’re a woman. Like, what made you go out of your way to try to shame me?” Bertinelli said. “And I’m not the first person to try to be shamed on TikTok or Instagram or any place. So, we’re women. We have to stick together, OK? Don’t shame somebody if they want to do something, anything, to make themselves feel better as they go out into this insane, flippin’ crazy world, OK?”

She then shattered any kind of stigma surrounding cosmetic procedures by admitting that if Botox helped her feel better about her appearance, she’d use it.

“Some people can do Botox, and it looks amazing on them,” she said. “I am not one of them, unfortunately, or I would’ve kept doing it. But thankfully, it faded. I couldn’t wait for it to fade.”

[From The Huffington Post]

I wonder who told Valerie that Botox would help with puffy eyes because that just seems like bad advice. Botox in the forehead will slightly lift the tail of the brow in many cases, but it won’t meaningfully change how your eye socket looks. Anyway, good for her for calling this person out. The stigma against women getting treatments like Botox is so annoying, and it does feel like women can’t win. If they age naturally, people shame them, and if they get professional help, people shame them.

As for the person shaming her being a woman, I’m not surprised at that. In my experience, women can shame each other worse than men sometimes. And I think women often shame each other because of envy, or because they feel threatened. I was raised in a very conservative church and I carried parts of “modesty culture” around with me even after I left the church. I’d never say anything to other women, but I would judge them in my mind for wearing revealing clothes, and it would bother me so much. I had to examine why I was getting so activated, and I realized it was because I envied them. I wanted to be seen, I wanted to be desired, I wanted to own my femininity like they were. And the culture I was raised in told me I was a deviant and a Jezebel if I wanted any of those things, so I suppressed a lot of stuff. Now I’m not triggered at all by other women wearing whatever the heck they want. In most cases when other women annoy me, it’s because they’re reflecting back something I haven’t accepted about myself. I think a similar dynamic is often at play when women shame each other for how they manage aging or treatments like Botox. Valerie has always looked great to me and I hope she doesn’t let mean comments get to her.

I couldn't hear it that well so I cranked up the volume and had to shorten it for twitter. [1/2] pic.twitter.com/yU7DdQqKZO

— aka stardust (@a_k_a_stardust) July 17, 2023

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