Something funny—well, it wasn’t
so much funny as it was curious—happened recently. I got Botox for the
first time last month, but unless I told you (I told everyone), you’d
have no idea. It was just a tiny pinch in between my brows where I tend
to furrow my brow in casual judgment, and a bit underneath each eye near
the tops of my cheekbones—and just like dermatologist Jeannette Graf promised, I woke up looking, well, better. I was pretty shameless about it, and confessed—if you want to call it that—to anyone that would listen.
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But let’s rewind: When I got home from the appointment, my skin
slightly red and splotchy from injecting it with a needle, my boyfriend
just shook his head at me. He’d tried to talk me out of getting Botox a
few days prior, telling me (genuinely, it should be noted) that he loves
me just how I am, and that it would be vain to get Botox at age 29—even
if it was just “preventative.” I figured he was a dude and just didn’t
get it, and didn’t he want me to spend less time getting ready?
Then, when I casually mentioned it to my friends—many of whom have no
problem lying in a tanning bed a few times a month and Instagramming
about it—they shrieked in disdain. I heat-froze my fat once a week for a month and got a pimple injected with cortisone
without so much as an eyebrow raise, but apparently, they draw the line
at Botox: Complaints ranged from “You’re not even 30! You don’t even
need it!” to “IT’S SO BAD FOR YOU!”—and, my favorite, “Now you have to
get it all the time!”
[post_ads]But here’s the final straw: When I got to work, a co-worker Slacked
me (which, for the uninitiated, is the office-equivalent of G-chat),
asking me how the Botox went. We have a pretty modern and
non-traditional setup, so I just turned around and basically yelled
across the office about my injections, somehow prompting her to
apologize because she wasn’t sure if I “wanted everyone to know.” We
openly discuss sex positions, orgasm shots, and chemical peels—so why would Botox be secret territory?
Then it hit me: Should I be embarrassed that I got Botox? Is it
something I should lie about and instead tell anyone who asks that I’ve
just been using some magical serum? Why did everyone insist on
whispering when they asked me about it? I know I’m not the only millennial who’s gotten it, so when will the stigma wear off?
“I’m getting younger and younger patients,” says Graf, who was
outraged when I told her about the backlash. “In fact, we’re noticing
that people who are getting [Botox] younger and younger don’t need it as
frequently, and can avoid getting lines. You can stop anytime.”
As of 2015,
64 percent of facial plastic surgeons saw an increase in Botox in
patients under 30, and just about half a million of those getting Botox
last year were between the ages of 19 and 34—the difference of half a
generation. In 2014, Botox was the most popular procedure for patients under 30, up 6 percent from 2013.
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Dermatologist Joseph Eviatar, who also works out of OMNI Aesthetic in
NYC, stepped in to back me up, too: Many of his patients are as young
as their early twenties, and for some, it’s less about blurring the fine
lines that haven’t even appeared yet: “One of my patients is 22, and
she just wants to see what she can do,” he says, referring to
injectables. “And it wasn’t about making her look younger, it’s about
making her look great.”
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