Forgive me if I raise an eyebrow at Botox mania – it's because I still can

The Guardian

7 days ago

If, like me, you have watched agog, alarmed or just confused at the speed at which tweakments and cosmetic surgery have gone mainstream, then consider this minor piece of celebrity news.
Earlier this month, Jennifer Garner became the latest A-lister to say that having Botox was a mistake. 'Botox doesn't work very well for me,' she told Harper's Bazaar. 'I like to be able to move my forehead.'
She joins a growing list of high-profile women including Courteney Cox, Nicole Kidman, Ariana Grande, Cameron Diaz and more who have described quitting Botox, fillers or other injectables because of undesired results – namely looking 'weird' (direct quote from Diaz there), and losing the ability to make certain facial expressions. Which presumably, for people whose income is directly linked to their ability to make you feel stuff using their faces (also known as 'acting'), must be a serious setback.
I'm no actor, but as someone plagued by a 'face that gives it away', I am delighted to hear it being said that facial expressions are, in fact, quite great. Beautiful. Powerful. Worth having in the round, even if there are downsides, like getting you in trouble at every karaoke night ('You look like Wallace smiling at Gromit,' said a friend of mine about my 'pretending to enjoy this!' face. ) Or in the case of the Hollywood set, looking a little older. ('You need movement in your face,' said Cox. 'Those aren't wrinkles, they're smile lines. I've had to learn to embrace movement.')
I really do think this bears repeating: facial expressions are ace! Our superpowers, really. Remember how your parents just had 'a look' that said 'stop that right now'? Magic. And what about crow's feet? Surely, they're the ultimate lie detector: they only appear when you've really – properly – made someone laugh. How wonderful are these meek crevices that convey emotion as deep as the sea? Tiny but mighty. And they only get better over time. Grande agrees. 'I want to see my well-earned cry lines and smile lines,' she said in 2023. 'Ageing can be such a beautiful thing.' (Did I mention she was in her 20s then? I'd recommend a pillow if you need something to scream into.)
Perhaps it is ridiculous to spell all this out. A bit obvious, maybe. But we would all miss facial expressions if they disappeared from our screens. Just ask Erika Jayne, one of the stars of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who was caught up in a controversy when she broke down on TV about filing for divorce, mascara streaks running down her face. Fans said this was contrived, given she famously wears waterproof mascara, but when you can't move your face, what else can you do? A clever turn from the makeup artist, if you ask me.
For clarity, none of this is to say that Botox and injectables are bad, even if the way we talk about them is. Our conversations are fraught, and any critical point about these products must be caveated with 'I ACCEPT OTHER WOMEN'S CHOICES' repeated at volume, lest you be accused of being a bad feminist. Or it descends into prudish hectoring of women for having a bit of fun or choosing to improve their prospects in an image-obsessed world which they did not create, but have to live in. But it is possible to defend women's rights to do whatever they choose with their bodies while also questioning this seismic cultural shift, ideally while giving side eye to the capitalist machine working to sell these treatments despite no one knowing the long-term impacts. (Though whether that side eye has had a hyaluronic acid filler to combat bags is irrelevant because WE ACCEPT OTHER WOMEN'S CHOICES.)
But this is not about that. This is a simple love letter to the forehead crease. A paean to the smile line. Change is inevitable, as are some things being lost along the way. Can we imagine a world where every groove and crinkle being smoothed out is as standard – as basic – as combed hair and brushed teeth? It's not inconceivable. Nor is it inconceivable that, when the cost gets too high and the headspace too big, all of this falls away; no more than a passing trend, like getting a tattoo in Chinese. And maybe, just maybe, this all leads to a massive societal overhaul where some fabulous female revolutionaries overthrow The Man by thwarting facial recognition cameras by literally having the same face. Well, it could happen, though maybe I'm getting carried away.
Who knows what the future holds and how quickly we will see it? For now, perhaps it's one to watch, to raise an eyebrow at or furrow our brow – and to enjoy doing it, while we still can.
Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK