Getting help with Botox

Have you heard the one about the woman who got Botox? Probably not, because it’s rarely talked about. However, I was with some friends the other day and after a bit of wine and a lot of cheese – or vice versa – the question of Botox finally came up.

We are all women of a certain age, with inevitable city miles and wear and tear on the upholstery, and yet we’ve never had that conversation.

I like to think it’s because we have more interesting things to talk about, but I suspect it’s that there’s a certain shame in admitting to getting help with the ole bodywork, be it Botox, fat jabs, fillers…

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But the honesty of the moment kind of broke my heart. Consider this. One woman works in the tech industry, already skewed male and youthful, though she is neither.

One day, she overheard a colleague who had been professionally undermining her talking to their shared boss, saying how tired she was looking, the implication being she wasn’t up to the task, that she was struggling. Not true, but now it was out there, a seed planted.

“I wasn’t going to let that idiot beat me,” said our friend, so off she went for gentle Botox – eyes, forehead – with a top-up every few months. She looks fantastic, as ever, but now she feels all-conquering too. Bonus: her (clueless) partner fancies her more.

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Then there’s the woman whose husband died suddenly a few years back. They were a childless couple by choice, devoted to each other alone, and in a second, it was all gone. She was cut to the core by his loss, so broken that her grief became etched on her face as a slash of pain down her forehead and between her eyes. Widow face, she called it.

As she started to pick up the jagged pieces of her life, the crease stayed put, heartbreak made physical, so every glimpse of herself in the mirror would send her straight to that dark place again. She had Botox so that “widow” wouldn’t become her identity.

She’s not a merry widow yet, but she feels better about herself. So if a tweakment can improve your mental health, why not? I’m not there yet – and 18 years younger in my picture here – but if there’s ever a new smooth picture, you’ll know why.

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