Freeze frame: Botox and the younger woman

Will getting Botox in your 20s prevent the wrinkles of your future? Jen Stevens finds out

A growing number of young women and men are seeking out treatments before ageing has even begun.

Prejuvenation is big business. You may not have heard much about it, but a growing number of young women and men are seeking out treatments that will combat ageing, before it’s even begun.

Botox is a big player when it comes to pre-treating lines and wrinkles, because of its ability to freeze the facial muscles and stop lines becoming embedded.

Dr Paul Reddy is the medical director of Therapie Clinics, and he believes in the benefits of early intervention.

“If you look at it from a medical standpoint, everything is evolving is towards prevention — and aesthetics and preservation of human beauty is becoming an increasingly important part of that. I think that prevention is better than dealing with somebody who comes with fairly advanced ageing of the human face, there’s only so much you can actually do at that stage.”

“It’s a little too soon to start in your early 20s though — if you look at the average 20 to 25-year-old female, or indeed male, there is very little in the way of lines unless they come from a family background where they’re very prevalent. A lot of people think that their facial lines are all genetic but they’re not, they’re behavioural. The lines that we develop on our faces are as a result of mimicking our parents, that’s where we learn our facial characteristics from.”

Though the patients that Dr Paul sees tend to be on average in the early 30s, he does get a younger cohort that come in with particular concerns: “I do get women, and occasionally men, coming in in their 20s who are trying to prevent what they know will happen because they studied their mothers and grandmothers, and can see how things are going to evolve over the next 10 or 15 years.”

Dr Paul says if you continue to keep up treatments, the muscle that you have effectively paralysed will shrink down and not regain its previous strength. You’ve basically frozen a muscle and time.

“Any muscle that is not being used will get what we call disuse, it literally physically shrinks. If you broke your arm, the muscles of your forearm let’s say will literally shrink over a period of time because you’re not using them. Botox produces the same effect. If a muscle is not being used, it will naturally shrink. That’s what you’ll actually see. So for the people who have repeated injections every four months or so, the muscle will probably never get back to its previous strength, less they completely stop treatment.”

Dr Paul says that Botox has been commonly used for so long now, that people can be confident in the results, its efficacy and its safety. He even used to use it on patients in his previous role as a consultant urologist, as an alternative to complicated surgery.

“Potential patients might say to me ‘will this produce any long-lasting effects?’[or] ‘If I stop it, will they get back to where I was before?’... It has been used for long enough now that we have long term data... to show that there are no long-term sequelae or aftereffects or consequences.”

Some practitioners refer to ‘resetting the baseline’ when it comes to Botox and ageing. If you start using it before wrinkles get too deep, and continue using it to your 40s, you have a different baseline than somebody who has never used it at all and has allowed nature to take its course.

A lot of people think that their facial lines are all genetic but they’re behavioural, says Dr Paul Reddy.

Benefits of Botox

Pamela Laird is the founder of beauty brand Moxi Loves, and has been on our screens on both the BBC and RTÉ versions of The Apprentice. She started getting Botox in her teens to solve a medical condition.

“I was diagnosed with hyperhidrosis, which is overactive sweat glands in my underarms, in my teens. I looked into what was available to treat it and when I went to a consultant there were two options, it was surgery, or Botox, and because my mom had been having Botox and we were familiar with it, it was clear that that was where we should start.

“It worked straightaway, and it changed my life. I could wear what I wanted, I was confident, it was huge for a teenager.

“A few years after that I started getting it in my face. I was on steroids a lot as a kid for my asthma I had those three lines across the centre of my forehead which bothered me, and when I wore makeup it just accentuated it. When I had it done in my forehead [it was] such a game changer and I generally have it done twice a year now.”

Pamela also has Botox injected into the masseter muscle to help with teeth grinding and headaches and is very open and honest on Instagram about what she gets done. “ I love trying new things, I’ve tried so much over the years that have worked really well and I think it’s definitely part of the job to know what’s new.”

Beauty expert and entrepreneur Pamela Laird  Picture: Sasko Lazarov/ Photocall Ireland

The new normal

Dr Dana Berkowitz is an associate professor of sociology at Louisana State University, and the author of Botox Nation: Changing the Face of America.

Her book is described as the first in-depth social investigation into the development and rising popularity of Botox, in it she looks at the normalisation of Botox and how it’s marketed, promoted, and talked about in the media.

She found that getting Botox is treated as very normal by women’s media in particular, noting that Vogue describes it as being “a basic thing, like getting a manicure or getting your hair dyed. It’s on the grooming checklist, it’s part of the game”.

Many Botox practitioners she spoke to describe Botox as part of the repertoire of responsible self-care. And as part of her research for the book, she went to see a dermatologist and told her she wasn’t ready to start Botox — the Dr’s response shocked Dana.

“I would say you are being negligent,” the dermatologist told her.

“Botox is almost a requirement. If you make enough money to afford it, it should be one of those affordable luxuries… It’s still a luxury, but certainly it’s something that you should have in your budget. For women, I always say you know skin care is first. Sunscreen, Retin-A, antioxidants…And the next dollar you should spend should be Botox.”

Dr Dana believes that people become addicted to how their face looks with the addition of Botox, and find it hard to stop using it.

For her book, she has interviewed dozens of people who used Botox and only one, a man, had ever paused treatment. She told the New York Times that “your face without Botox ‘looks ugly to you’. This wrinkle-free, ageless face becomes totally normalised. We expect it and then we view that as beautiful.”

Aisling Keenan is a journalist and beauty editor. She writes honest beauty reviews on Patreon, and is co-founder of roguecollective.ie. She began getting Botox in her 20s.

“I first got it at 28, but I often wish I’d done it before that. The push that made me book the first consultation was that I was getting married about eight months later, but truthfully it had been something I’d wanted to do for a long time.

“I’ve inherited my dad’s skin, and his very expressive face, so from when I was about 20 or 21, I’d developed really deep lines on my forehead. Age didn’t come into it for me — it was a prematurely ageing upper face that made me very self-conscious, and that was down to genetics rather than my age.

Botox Nation: Changing the face of America by Dana Berkowitz

“When I went for my first consultation — to a place I eventually decided not to go with — they suggested other areas that had soft lines appearing, but I said no to them because I don’t mind my face looking its age. I just didn’t want to look older than I was, which I felt like I did for a long time.

“I do believe it has been great from a preventative perspective. I have so few lines around my eyes and no new ones on my forehead, and my frown lines are much softer even when I’m coming up to my next appointment.”

Aisling thinks people are more open about the treatments that they get now, which is very important in her line of work. For a long time, some influencers and beauty writers were putting their smooth foreheads down to skincare alone.

“It’s starting to become more normalised and less taboo. I think for someone with influence, particularly in the beauty industry, if you get treatments like these and don’t tell people about it, it crosses into being a little disingenuous.

“How can I, with a clear conscience, recommend skincare to someone based on what it has done for my skin when Botox has been giving me more than a helping hand the whole time?

The effects of Botox just cannot be bottled. Likewise, the effects of skincare can’t just be achieved with a once-off injection. There are so many benefits to both. Good skincare does so much, but as far as literally removing all trace of lines from your face for a period of time, with just a two-week settle-in time? No skincare that I know of can do that.”