Is Not Getting Botox Becoming Odd?

At lunch the other day a friend told me she had decided to get Botox. My immediate feeling was, Don’t leave me. As in, don’t leave me alone on this increasingly deserted island of lined foreheads and furrowed brows. I know I’m being dramatic; not everyone is getting Botox---it’s a luxury item at four or five hundred a pop, and I know a lot of people who could afford it but would never get it---but something has definitely shifted.

I’m starting to feel like those of us not getting Botox and lip fillers and the like are out of the cultural mainstream. One sign of the pervasiveness of these procedures is the lack of comment about the unlined faces we see on TV. In the fall my husband and I were texting with friends about the show “Nobody Wants This.” After my husband commented on the uncanny absence of lines on Kristen Bell’s face, one of our friends responded, “I didn’t notice that.” And there it was: so common we don’t even notice.

Indeed, the number of women (and increasingly, men) getting noninvasive cosmetic procedures is growing steadily and they’re getting younger. In 2023 there were 9.5 million procedures involving Botox and similar products. 85% of these were done on women. The American Society for Plastic Surgeons reported an 8-9% increase in these procedures between 2022 and 2023 in all age groups, starting with the youngest bracket in their data set (19 and younger!) I see this trend of preventative Botox use even in my university setting: A 30-year-old woman was in my office recently and remarked casually, after seeing books on my shelf about the beauty industry, that she had gotten Botox. No big deal.

I find myself noticing when celebrities do have facial lines rather than when they don’t. Not surprisingly, many more male celebrities are allowed to have wrinkles; just compare Nicole Kidman’s character to Liev Schreiber’s weed-smoking, golf-putting one in The Perfect Couple. That’s why I found it so refreshing when I recently binge-watched the Danish comedy Baby Fever. Maybe this is just more possible in Denmark than in the US, but the principal actress Josephine Park, aged 37 and playing a character who is also 37, has actual lines on her forehead when she raises her eyebrows. Oh beautiful sight!

So, to all the women out there who are loudly proclaiming that natural aging is right and beautiful, I’m here to tell you, I’m with you! But alas, we seem to be losing this cultural fight. The tide has turned. So what now? It’s time for new tactics.

I see a few options:

1) Move to Denmark.

2) Accept that we are a dying breed and become cultural ambassadors for this soon-to-be extinct way of life. Imagine this: We visit classrooms bringing our natural wrinkles like others might bring their ancestral traditions. In front of a group of open-mouthed kids we could say, look closely, see how I’m bringing my eyebrows close together so that my skin buckles into deep grooves? That is what our ancestors looked like if they were concentrating hard, or were skeptical about something, or were displeased.

3) Rebrand facial lines as boldly countercultural, an aesthetic choice like all-over body art, or being Goth. Purposely out of the mainstream, cultivating a look that embraces the range of facial expression and the way our bodies exist in time and change accordingly. A badass look, a biker babe without the bike. Like, fuck yeah, my lines run deep. Feel those grooves, baby.

I’m liking option 3. As part of this rebranding we need a new name and a hashtag. I’m thinking, #craggy, or #craggyasfuck. The Cambridge Dictionary Online defines “craggy” as “used to describe a man’s face that is quite roughly formed and has loose skin but is also attractive.” I mean, how perfect is that? It sounds a bit like “rad” and it has hints of “on the rag,” which is ripe for repurposing anyway. Why should only men get to be craggy?

#Craggy is cool and hot, proud and confident. Craggy says, look at me. Look at what these lines say.