The Botox Blues: How Botox Changed the Way I Look at Myself
“You look too young for Botox,” the practice owner said as I got up from the waiting room chair.
I noticed a framed photo of a French Bulldog wearing a pink bow tie hanging above the reception desk. His forehead folds mimicking mine. The only difference was that he hadn’t spent £75 on a consultation for a chat about having them frozen off.
I’d never really fancied Botox. Injecting poison into my face in order to stop expressing emotions just felt off to me. And emotions? I have plenty. Some friends had succumbed to societal pressure and were no longer able to raise their eyebrows in disbelief at shared ‘what’s-new-with-you’ stories.
Besides, it wasn’t like trying out blue eyeliner in the 90s or fashioning faux-fur coats and collapsing Ugg boots. It wasn’t something you could wipe off vigorously with a wet wipe. Botox was bigger and more drastic. And not just on the bank balance. Can you get Botox for that?
One friend boasted it’d banished her 35 year old frown, overjustifying it was for medical reasons as she suffered from headaches. “It’s sitting at the desk all day, the screen makes me frown.’’ Curious, I looked in the mirror that night while brushing my teeth. And there they were. Like they’d overheard the conversation and thought,” Ooh! We’re up!” Standing to attention and rising to the surface like little creased flags of ageing. My thoughts rose to the occasion, too: “Hold on a minute… I work at a computer all day… I probably get headaches sometimes, right? THAT’S IT. WE’RE GETTING BOTOX BABY!
I booked in for a consultation. That’s all it would be, a consultation. A £75 quick chat in a fluorescently lit room. And while I’m there, I may as well ask the practitioner about a little something for the ol’ crow’s feet. (We really couldn’t have called them something softer? Dove’s toes?)
The moment the practice owner told me I looked too young for Botox, that should have been it. That should have been a fulfilling enough outcome. A more affordable one, too. Botox? Completed it, mate. Didn’t even touch the sides. A pro face-freezer/wrinkle wizard tells me I look too young for Botox? I should have walked out then and there, head held high.
But, she had some more home truths for me first.
She was in pink scrubs, armed with a clipboard and a pace that could rival the London Underground. She told me, while shading in the corner of the consultation form, that she'd left the city for a “slower pace of life” in Devon, yet she spoke faster than the disclaimer on a drink responsibly advert.
My eyebrows raised and my forehead crinkled as she boasted about the financial success of her London Clinic. She stopped scribbling and looked at my forehead. “We could definitely do something about that.”
But I wasn't there for that. I hadn't been particularly bothered about that part of my head. My forehead had always been...expressive. My brother used to call me Klingon when I grew up. I didn’t realise what it meant at the time and took it as I had always wanted attention and to be held (some things never change). I could make the lines dance like puppets. I’d even sent a photo to the girls' chat once, asking if it looked more like a forehead or an arse crease. I’d grown used to it, an accepted part of me.
She had other ideas.
She proceeded to point out the subtle rosacea on my cheeks. Suggested salmon sperm. Yes. Salmon sperm - as the latest miracle fix. The classic “all the celebrities are getting it” was thrown in, like a quote lifted straight from Hello! magazine. It was delivered with such sincerity that I had to sit there and try not to laugh; partly at the absurdity of the conversation, but also at the fact that I was still sitting there, nodding along. Salmon spunk? Really? I thought to myself, momentarily transported to some questionable flings in my early twenties - the ones I’d firmly denied the privilege. And yet here I was, being asked to give a salmon the honour.
She went on (I know!) to comment that my dark under-eye circles could be eradicated, too. That we could Botox above the brow for my heavy eyelids. “And the chin,” she added, gently pushing mine upward with a manicured finger. “That’ll deepen with age, so you may want to consider getting some there too.’’
My CHIN?! Not the chin! I suddenly felt like a cheap old doer-upper of a building. She was the new owner, busying about, gutting the place. Get rid of that, knock down this, fill that in, paint over that. I was a human bloody renovation project.
I stared at myself in the handheld mirror. I went in to talk about frown lines and was now filled with wrinkle-inducing, ugly shame about my forehead, cheeks, eyes… and now my chin, too?
She kept talking as she took a small box off the shelf.
“Best kind for Rosacea and aging skin. Vitamin C, E, K, and D. Travel size, too. Only £60, you can use your deposit for it and put the remaining £20 towards your Botox. Are we just doing the brow today, or shall we do the forehead now, too?” I took the box from her to stare at something other than my monstrosity of a face.
“Today?”
“Yes. If we do it now.” She spoke with urgency and a forced smile. A creaseless one at that.
I couldn’t walk out of that room with my puffy eyelids, salmon-spermless cheeks and under-eye bags the size of the new borrower-size creams I was about to spend £60 on. Somehow, Botox now felt like the bare minimum. It was the least I could do to ease the full inventory of facial flaws I’d just been handed.
The procedure was over quickly. Every injection felt like a small prick to my pride. And so, £350 later, I walked free from the interrogation room, feeling much less confident and acceptable-looking than when I went in. When I left, I cried. I felt deceptive and embarrassed, like I’d let myself down.
Over the next few days, I kept raising my eyebrows in the mirror but my forehead still creased. My frown lines seemed fiercer, too, likely because I had been ruminating so much on the intense exchange at the clinic.
Then one morning...my forehead didn’t express itself. It was odd. I liked it, but I didn’t all at once. My expression was muted from the brow up. The playful eyebrow raises I used to rely on to lighten a room or call out someone’s nonsense? Gone. But I wasn’t satisfied, of course. It was almost like freezing the movement in my forehead shone a spotlight on everything else. The clinic owners' face and voice echoed in my mind like a floating disembodied head in a surrealist film, repeating on loop:
“We could also put some Botox above the brow… just to plump that area up.”
“I see you’ve got quite heavy eyelids.”
“And the dimple in your chin, it’s alright now, but as you get older…”
“Salmon sperm ssalmonnnnn spermmmmm ssssalmonnn spermmmmm.’’
I had traded in one insecurity for about five others. Not exactly a fair exchange.
I liken Botox to pulling a thread on a jumper. You go in for a quick frown fix, but once you start pulling, the whole thing begins to unravel. And suddenly, you’re standing in front of the mirror thinking, Was my chin always like that? or When did my eyes start looking tired? Should I pay £400+ for fish jizz? Or worse…
WHY AM I STILL NOT PERFECT?!
Ah, here it was again, the need to be perfect. And now here I was… mourning the pre-botox me that hadn’t been so thoroughly inspected under a ring light and a pink clipboard. Because upon reflection, it wasn't about the lines was it? It was about control. About trying to smooth out the imperfect parts.
And perfectionism is something I’ve long been fascinated by - mostly because it lives in all of us. But perfection is a myth centred upon chasing the unattainable. And Botox, I realised, was just another way of trying to freeze what can’t be controlled: time, ageing, emotion, impermanence, the spectacle of being human.
Eight months on, I haven’t rebooked. No one has even noticed it’s worn off. No one has stopped me on the street with a horrified look of recognition: “YOUR BOTOX HAS GONE. WHERE IS IT?” No one cares about my face because they are too preoccupied with living on their own.
After three months or so, I was able to raise my eyebrows again. And with them, a few realisations. Now, I'm not ruling it out forever, afterall, I’ve learned ‘never again’ is just another sneaky form of perfectionism. But these days, I’m more interested in accepting the face I wake up with. The one that moves when I laugh and folds with frustration. Even if it includes those ski-slope lines,tired-can’t-even-blame-being-a-mum-eyes, or dimpled chin that will apparently worsen with age.
So no, I wouldn’t recommend it. What I would recommend is considering that maybe we’ve all been sold a lie that we’d be more lovable with less of ourselves showing. Yet, truthfully, all of us, just as we are, as we inevitably age and unfold, are already worth looking at. And no amount of poison-filled pin pricks or salmon sperm is ever going to change that.
Written by Chelsea Branch
Chelsea is a writer exploring the psyche, our relationships with others and ourselves and the messy, beautiful reality of being human. She is currently writing Imperfectly Human, a narrative non-fiction book about perfectionism and what happens when we stop trying to fix ourselves and start allowing ourselves to be.
Readers can sign up for book updates and become part of the Imperfectly Human Club at https://www.imperfectlyhumanclub.com.
You can also find her writing on Substack at @chelseabwrites.
