can a feminist get botox?
we're going there!
Dearly beloved subscriber,
Our new Q&A feature has been filling up with some fabulous queries, and this week I decided to take on a very thorny feminist debate: “to botox, or not to botox?” In this edition of The Help Hive, Jill asks a provocative question that I know many of us grapple with too.
Dear Liz,
Is the new obsession with skin care and anti aging the same as the early 2000s obsession with being unobtainably skinny just packaged in a new way…? I am so happy of the progress we have made so now it is not normal for friends to be constantly discussing their “diets” of just eating grape fruit and crackers … but why does it feel like to me everyone’s constant discussion and obsession with expensive skin care products and Botox and fear of aging feel the exact same as that?? Why does it feel like everyone’s just on board with pushing and obsessing over trying to just prevent that most natural thing ever- getting older! That women now are all just stuck in another impossible toxic cycle of trying to be something impossible? How can people preach body positively and in the same sentence discuss spending 100s of dollars on lotions (that research has shown do not prevent aging!). I look around at my peers and so many people I respect… and feel like I’m just so alone in this feeling. Does anyone else feel this way?
-Jill
Dear Jill,
You are most certainly not alone in feeling like everyone is chasing youth more than ever. The share of people doing botox has increased by 800% since 2000 and the pandemic increased the demand for the procedure by 54%. People over 40 still make up the largest demographic booking these appointments, but doctors are reporting a larger and larger contingency of women in their 20s coming in for #babybotox, which means receiving injections to prevent wrinkles that don’t yet exist.
I still remember being at a friend’s 30th birthday dinner a few years ago and realizing that I was the only woman at the table who hadn’t had work done, despite being slightly older than everyone else. It made me feel physically unwell. “None of you have wrinkles yet!” I gasped. “Oh we know, but it’s preventative,” they assured me. I went to the bathroom to gather my thoughts and I found myself feeling outraged but also weirdly left out. “Is everyone doing botox without me?” I whispered under my breath as I walked out of the restroom, suddenly feeling FOMO for something I hadn’t even decided I even wanted to do.
The next day I quizzed all the women at work only to realize that what I had encountered wasn’t unusual at all. Even when I went home to Montreal, the mecca of non-materialism, a good friend told me that her dentist had offered cheap injections so she had started getting them too. In a matter of weeks, I had gone from believing I’d never get jabbed, to googling “botox near me.”
It’s a savvy marketing ploy, and it’s easy to see it as a sexist one. Defying the process of aging is a sophisticated way to trap women into seeking a goal that’s by definition, logistically impossible to attain. It’s no wonder anti-aging products and treatments are the fastest growing skincare industry. We’re being told that if we just shell out enough money, we can resist science and gravity.
But there’s also an obvious feminist take on botox too.