Is Our Obsession With Botox Really About A Fear of Ageing?

Recently on TikTok, a 22 year old influencer I follow posted a video of herself getting ‘Baby Botox,’ complete with a promo code for money off the treatment. When I was a child, I used to think that Botox was something that celebrities got to make us forget how old they were.

Nowadays, it is so normalised that saying you wouldn’t get Botox in the future would be considered strange, especially when you can get it done down the road by someone who took a one-day course. Is our obsession with Botox linked to the fear of our own mortality? Why can’t we own our ageing faces the way we used to?

Botox and plastic surgery have become so normalised that the idea of owning your natural face is interpreted as wrong or unfeminine. A young girl going out without makeup may be perceived in the same way, as if she’s not doing enough simply by existing as she is.

I think of Pamela Anderson, a beautiful, intelligent woman who was both shamed and praised for her ‘bravery’ in not getting anything done to her face or not wearing makeup to a red carpet event. This made headlines. Why was it so bizarre for a woman to choose to look like herself? Why is this such a brave choice? Yet men feel far less pressure to alter their appearance for the sake of others’ comfort. We are rarely held to the same standard.

To be an older woman, the pressure to “reverse” your body’s natural ageing process is apparent, from obvious Botox treatments to the endless lines of anti-ageing products. Almost every girl I know admits she’ll probably fall for this kind of subliminal consumer messaging at some point, myself included. But why is this?

The preparation for the ageing process doesn’t just fall on older women, but girls who’ve barely entered adulthood. “Baby Botox” rose as a trend in recent years, seen as a “preventative” for those “real wrinkles” you’ll get in the future. This is all a marketing tactic, despite growing concerns that these injections may even accelerate the ageing process over time.

It’s upsetting to see young girls spending their hard-earned money on an unnecessary, ineffective treatment, when they could have spent that few hundred euro on travel or their hobbies. Irish girls as young as 16 are seeking these injections, resorting to the black market to access more affordable treatments. Sadly, these girls whose frontal lobes aren’t even fully developed, are chasing an unreachable ideal, shaped by social media, where images can be altered to any extent.

France recently banned influencers from promoting plastic surgery. I believe this is a great move, as some Irish influencers I once admired are now people I look at differently, as they film themselves being injected, with a promo code pasted across the screen, hoping a few naive viewers will go ahead, earning them commission. The whole thing feels quietly dystopian.

If you have a following, use that influence to encourage others to embrace their own lines and appearances, rather than pushing them to cling to something we can’t avoid, the natural progression of our lives. We don’t have control over time, ageing, or death, and the market is quick to invent ‘solutions’ that exploit that fear.

Is this what Botox is all about? The hypersexualisation of youth makes women cringe at the thought of themselves maturing, knowing and understanding themselves better and experiencing life unapologetically. Beauty isn’t about preserving yourself as a permanently youthful, expressionless version of yourself. Beauty has nothing to do with appearance, but with soul and nature.

The truth is, if we are lucky, we will be old, maybe even really old. We’ll be the old ladies hobbling around the grocery store, being escorted by a loved one or a carer, wrinkled, with white-grey hair, protruding veins on our hands, cataracts in our kind eyes and dentures where our smiles are. That’s if we’re lucky, really lucky. Maybe we’ll be grandmothers and can look back at the legacy we’ll leave after our short time on this planet.

Because after that we’ll be gone, we won’t be remembered for our lack of wrinkles, but instead, our characters, our souls, how kind, or funny, or talented we are. Nobody gives a speech at a funeral and references one’s baby-smooth skin.

I’m a hypocrite in all of this. Multiple times I said I’d get Botox, and maybe I still will someday, I don’t know. As a woman, you’re judged on your appearance since childhood. Prepping and priming yourself to the best of your ability, giving yourself the best chance you can in the world. To look in the mirror and see a face you no longer feel connected to must be scary, and I’m not exactly looking forward to my day either.

So why does anti-ageing hold so much value, when becoming a wise, older woman is one of the greatest honours we can achieve?

Words by Katie Walsh