All is Fair in Wrinkles and War
While scrolling on Tiktok, I came across a video of a woman no older than 25, who was absolutely beautiful, on her way to get her monthly botox injections. Her video was a “come with me” type of vlog, detailing how every month she booked appointments to get her face touched up or, as she joked, “frozen.” I kept watching the video trying to understand what exactly she was trying to get Botox for, as she looked so young and lively. Then, two things dawned on me: first, these procedures are getting extremely popular, and second, why would a beautiful woman start getting botox in her 20s?
It is clear that botox injections have seemingly become one of the most sought after surgical cosmetic procedures in the last decade. According to a study by SpaMedica, the largest cataract surgery provider in the UK, over 9 million Botox treatments were administered globally in 2022. This represents a 26.1% increase of botox treatments in one year. By using botulinum toxin, a neurotoxin produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, muscles become paralyzed once injected. The original medical use of botox was to halt muscle spasms with the intention of curing crossed eyes. However, over time it has become a tool to reduce wrinkles, as well as other signs of aging in areas such as the face, neck and forehead. In simpler terms, botox stops one from physically aging.
From Hollywood to everyday life, botox culture has spread amidst Gen Z and Millennials specifically. All over my explore page on Instagram, Youtube, and Tiktok are ads for botox and short videos of young women looking forward to booking their next injection appointment. Most of these women range between the ages of 18 to 30, most being no older than 30. The craze of anti-aging has exploded all over social media. These young women promote anti-aging products (such as creams like Retinol, whose supplements of vitamins can reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles) and treatments almost as if anti-aging products were a checkbox on a grocery list.
It is ironic that Gen Z and Millennials are considered the generations that encourage body positivity and self love, while simultaneously investing more energy than ever to make themselves look more attractive. From what I’ve seen by merely glancing at my For You page on Instagram, Gen Z and Millennials’ eccentric interest in anti-aging products and use of social media filters to alter the way that they look (i.e. skin texture), continuously perpetuate and reinforce the importance of beauty in our society.
The rise of social media and the pressure to put on a face for other people is both a sign and a product of this obsession to present oneself as perfect. Perfect skin, perfect cheekbones, perfect outfits— it would be no surprise that if a new product were to advertise rapunzel-esque hair growth, it would sell out the minute it hit stores. It seems to be, however, that this practice is heavily gendered. Drawing back on to SpaMedica’s study on the growth of Botox use in the world, 85.1% of Botox procedures were done on women. On my For You page, it is mainly women who create the “getting ready with me” videos. It is the young tween girls that talk to the camera through their use of heaps of sunscreen to prevent wrinkles.
This makes me wonder, in every generation, be it Gen Alpha, Gen Z, or Millennials, do us women have the common fear of losing our youth, and more importantly, our beauty? It seems to be that we are clinging to what we have now as if it is the only joy in our life, as if without our beauty, there is nothing else to hold dear. Is this something we are all thinking of but too scared to face? It is tragic to see that these women, who could be beautiful as they age, doing everything in their power to freeze themselves in time. By the age of 30, some women in the world have gone to extremes to have botox and injection appointments every week to control how their face looks. I find myself guilty of being an active participant in this fear of losing youth as well, as I’ve hammered sunscreen into my everyday makeup routine after hearing that it can prevent the early signs of wrinkling.
If I as a teenager had been so influenced by this anti-aging craze— enough to the point where I find myself adding small tips and tricks to my everyday skin and makeup routines— I can only imagine how detrimental this will be to Gen Alpha girls. The idea of aging has become a curse, one that must be stopped no matter the cost.
If not to reinforce my point already, I have already seen girls, no older than 14, invest obscene amounts of money in anti-aging creams and serums that passionate anti-aging influencers promote. We can only watch across three generations, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, as the natural process of aging transforms into an unfathomable nightmare, to be looked on with terror.
