In 2019, I was part of a team that made a short documentary on the rise of Botox in under 18s. This was before the term ‘baby Botox’ was a colloquialism you might use with your mates in the pub, but the start of what is now known as ‘Instagram face’.
The documentary premise was that I - a recently turned 23 year old with a baby face that meant I was embarrassingly ID’d whenever I went to a bar or brought a bottle wine in Tesco (even if it cost over £10 which has to be a dead give away that I’m over 18, no?) - would go to practitioners and simply ask for them for Botox. What we uncovered ranged from the expected to terrifying. One consultation included a man bragging about regularly Botox-ing 16 year old models. He told me my face ‘needed’ it and that my eyebrows could do with lifting.
I’m thinking about that a lot at the moment. I’m 27 now, coincidentally the age at which the preventative measure of ‘baby Botox’ should start, according to writer Afua Hirch’s recent feature in the Guardian on how she turned her back on society’s rigid beauty standards. “I just had it in my head that […] at 27, you need to be ready to go – each day of your life is the real deal. It isn’t a drill. […] Incidentally, 27 is around the age when women are told they should begin preventive Botox. Botox injections in this age group have increased by 28% since 2010,” she writes.
It may have only been four years, but the idea of ‘preventative Botox’ at 27 seems to me like much more of an excusable concept than anti-ageing injections at 23. By now, the lines on my forehead are sunken further into the skin. I get ID’d less frequently. I might be starting to look, if not my age, then at least like a grown up who is allowed to buy wine without supervision.
In truth, I’ve always hated looking young. Don’t turn away, reader - I know people hate hearing that. My mum tells me I’ll appreciate it when I’m older and get mistaken for someone with a decade less experience than I truly have - foreshadowing the inevitable hatred of age that hits all women. But while I’m young, having a baby face comes with its own grievances: I never feel taken seriously at work or in social settings with people more interesting than me, nor do I ever look chiselled or pointy like the Instagram models we’re meant to adore. And yet, despite spending decades of my life hating that I look too young, I’m one of the many considering halting the aging process.
But baby Botox is nothing to do with age, is it? I can’t comment for the forced invisibility of women as they grow into longer decades, deeper wrinkles and richer experiences that we’ve somehow dubbed disgusting, but I understand why for them Botox et al is a legitimate anti-aging treatment. And despite those who are the same age as me claiming tweakments aren’t about rolling back time but preventing it, I personally think it’s nothing to do with time at all.
It is about uniformity - a desire to not look too different from those we’re surrounded by. It’s the reason we all buy the same style jeans or move the partings in our hair in unison: yes, they look good, but really it’s just nice to have what Emma Dabiri describes in her book Disobedient Bodies as “This sort of smooth mask of a face that belongs to everybody and nobody.” To blend in, to be part of the crowd, to not be too noticeable.
Baby Botox is also, unequivocally, about control. Dabiri touches on how we see “the body [as] subservient to the mind”, and it’s why, when our physical selves change in ways we didn’t approve - in this case, when the skin creases and loosens - we feel wild and disorderly. It’s why studies show the largest increase in eating disorder symptoms is between the ages of 12 and 15, when huge physical changes feel so overwhelmingly uncontrollable. And it’s why suddenly seeing lines you didn’t instruct feels so alarming.
These are valid points and feelings and are said with no shade to the individuals using the tools we have available to us to feel better about the way their body does unexpected and unruly things. But for me, separating Botox from an age worry into a uniformity and control problem has made much more sense about why I’m tempted by it.
It’s helped me realise the purgatory of aging (visually, not time-wise. I actually love getting older by the calendar!) I’m experiencing. I’m close to outgrowing my lifelong craving for a more mature-looking face while I’m not quite at the age where I feel like I can suggest I look ‘older’. I clearly have a desire to claim back some understanding of my face, but the limbo - while confusing - stops me from justifying an invasive treatment that would simply act as a way to control my body.
I’ll likely toy with these feelings for much longer, but for now, I have to stand by the statement 23-year-old me made: no one needs Botox, but people without wrinkles really don’t need Botox.
Thanks so much for reading Gray’s Anatomy. I’d love to know your thoughts on baby Botox and tweakments, so please leave a comment.
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I absolutely know what you mean about baby face and being taken seriously- I’m a physician and my baby face does not help with that... so wrinkles and grey hair will have the benefit of people assuming I’m as qualified as I am? Fingers crossed...