I'm bitter that my friends are getting botox. Should I join them?

With help from Oscar Wilde

Skin under the magnifying glass

Dear Emma,

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but: I am a 38 year old woman, and the majority of my friends have had Botox. Now some are even contemplating other procedures i.e. face lift, tummy tuck, butt/boob lifts, etc. These are my oldest school friends, people with “normal” lives - not celebrities living in the public eye. What’s worse is that when we all get together, they spend a lot of time discussing their physical insecurities and complaining about visible signs of age.

I don’t know what to say when this topic comes up, mainly because I feel so depressed. It makes me hate being a woman. How many men are wasting their time worrying about wrinkles? It makes me think we are moving backward in terms of feminism. It even makes me question whether these are really friends I want around me, if I have to witness them contort themselves with procedures and surgeries for the rest of our lives. I leave our meet-ups feeling bitter and betrayed.

Then, at other times, I feel guilty about how much I’m judging the people I love. Why should I give a shit if a friend needs to get Botox to boost their confidence? Looking deep, I know that part of my anger comes from an insecurity that aging naturally will separate me from my friends, as I continue to grow older and they stay "young" forever.

So should I just give in and join them? Or is there a way to get over my resentful feelings?

Thank you for reading Fictional Therapy, an advice column that uses insights from classic literature to shed light on people’s modern-day dilemmas. If you’d like to receive new posts and support my work, please hit subscribe.

Oh, boy. Thanks for writing in about this, because injectables - of the face-freezing or skinny-making variety - are the subject-du-jour, and I have so much to say. First off, it’s always disconcerting when something goes from ‘what other people do’ to ‘what everyone does’ overnight, isn’t it. Like, one moment you’re making fun of teenagers for doing TikTok trends; the next minute your boss is doing the Wednesday Addams* dance with her husband and it’s not even supposed to be a joke. Just as social media has made it normal for people to, as Jia Tolentino puts it, ‘interact with themselves as if they are famous all the time’, it’s also played a part in normalising ‘Instagram Face’ as the aesthetic ideal of our era. You know what I mean: that kind of filter-smooth, full-lipped, hyper-symmetrical but strangely anonymous kind of beauty which can now be achieved in the real world through cosmetic enhancement. Like you, I remember when procedures like Botox and fillers were something only rich people in L.A. did: also like you, I’m now a woman in my thirties with plenty of friends who went down the injectables route years ago.

I understand why this makes you angry and depressed. The fact that it’s predominantly women getting Botox exposes one of society’s most long-standing injustices: that the cultural capital of women is bound up in their youth, while the lines on men’s faces are indicators of a wisdom and experience which only makes them sexier. The prevalence of affordable Botox has given us a new tool with which to pander to this double standard, but it certainly did not create it. We’ve always had mechanisms by which to torture/poison women into pursuing an ever-vanishing horizon of youthful skinny hotness, from back in our corset-wearing days (an hour-glass figure, the ultimate symbol of fertility) to the white lead make-up used by women in the Renaissance and 19th centuries to conceal wrinkles (and make you look paler) which was laced with deadly arsenic. In my teen years in the late 2000s, I felt the pressure to be ‘heroin-chic’ a la Kate Moss - arguably, a more punishing beauty standard than Botox. Trying to be that thin really takes up all your time and energy.

That being said, I do recognise the feeling you’re experiencing: that right now, we’re moving backwards when it comes to women’s rights. I think the rise in cosmetic surgery is a symptom of this backward step, rather than its cause, though. Currently, the leader of the “free world” is rolling back DEI programs, insisting on the primacy of normative gender expression, and championing the kind of queasy incel culture that calls women over 40 in professional roles ‘ugly’, ‘fat’ and ‘horse-faced’. How do you survive in this new landscape? The answer is simple, and the MAGA girls are embracing it openly: Make America Hot Again.

To summarise: the degree to which women feel comfortable visibly aging - and not conforming to a limited vision of what it means to female - exists in response to the cultural conditions that surround us (and earlier I mentioned social media, which is obviously another big factor in shaping changing standards). But of course there is something ahistorical about the lure of Botox, too: it speaks to a desire to evade growing old felt by humans of both genders since the dawn of time. So if Botox helps dull the fear of death - and if now might be a particularly advantageous time for you, as a woman, to appear ageless - should you go under the needle? What might be gained, and what might be lost, from joining your friends?

Your question made me think about Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. (No doubt Wilde would sniff at me using his book as a tool through which to reflect on your problem, given his declaration in the preface to Dorian that ‘all art is quite useless’ - but hey ho, the author is dead.) Wilde’s novel centres on a beautiful young man called Dorian, who is as queer-coded as you can be in the late 19th century, and whose good looks are intensely admired by two older gentlemen: Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton. Basil processes his own infatuation by obsessively painting a portrait of Dorian, while the hedonistic aristocrat Henry tempts and frightens the young man with a lecture on the transience of beauty: ‘Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so?’ In response to Henry’s clever, very Wildean sophistries - ‘The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it’ - Dorian impulsively wishes for his portrait, rather than his own body, to suffers the ravages of time - and his wish is granted (by what Faustian magic this works is never explained). Under Henry’s decadent influence, a now permanently youthful Dorian begins to pursue a life of amoral pleasure-seeking - yet as he commits increasingly callous (and ultimately murderous) acts, he notices wrinkles aren’t the only thing reflected in his changing portrait: the painting is growing grotesque, too; reflecting the corruption of his soul. Ultimately, Gray can’t bear to look at the monstrous image, and stabs the canvas - resulting in his own death.

It would be easy to read The Picture of Dorian Gray as a parable about the dangers of vanity. Arguably, Dorian’s obsession with appearance means he fails to cultivate an inner life: after all, in exchange for timeless youth, he declares himself willing to sacrifice his very being - ‘I would give my soul for that!’ You could even argue that Dorian’s fixed beauty is the cause of his decline: safe in the knowledge he will always be accepted by polite society, Dorian commits acts of cruelty and betrayal without fear of repercussion.

But I think this reading is simplistic. The novel doesn’t frame beauty, its possession or appreciation, as an inherent evil. In fact, many of the more moralising lines - ‘It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for’ - were added in to pacify easily scandalised British readers for the novel’s English publication, and were absent in the first, serialised American edition, which revels more freely in the sensual pleasure of beauty. Instead, what I think Dorian Gray demonstrates is the corrosive effects of isolation and shame. Dorian’s aging portrait becomes his darkest secret, locked up in an attic for years and shown to no-one, least of all himself. When Dorian does finally reveal the painting to Basil - the closest thing he has to a true friend - being truly seen is so unbearable that ‘an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for Basil’ comes over him, and he murders the man. In the end it is not so much vanity or even guilt which undoes Dorian: it is disjunct; the torturous gap between what he presents to the world and what he feels must be ‘hidden away at all costs’. (In the context of Wilde’s homosexuality, you could argue that this novel is not about beauty at all, but about the pain and complexity of keeping secrets.)

I think this is what you might - not necessarily, but might - stand to lose by going down the Botox route. If cosmetic procedures become a mask behind which you hide the shame you feel about aging, you may end up feeling as if your place in the world revolves around keeping a secret. I know this not because I am a model of self-acceptance (hah!) but because, as an actor, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to look younger than I am, and I can tell you there’s nothing like the discomfort of being 26 in a room full of 14-year-olds auditioning for the same role, wondering if my outfit and body language convincingly signal ‘I only just got my period’. (Ironically, I feel far younger and freer now that I’ve firmly aged out of the teen casting bracket.) Far more importantly, however: if Botox becomes a mask behind which you hide the truth of aging from yourself, you risk a life spent resisting rather than accepting (embracing?) the inarguable truth of the human condition. We do not yet have a way to arrest the development of internal organs. One day we have to open the attic, and reckon with the truth of what’s inside. Perhaps that’s easier to do if you never close the door in the first place.

I have railed against the conditions which drive women to worrying about their age, and tried to outline the potential losses of the Botox decision - but actually, not because I’m staunchly opposed to injectables. If anything, I think what you stand to gain by looking younger in a society that values youth is just so obvious it hardly needs outlining. Probably I am vainer than you, too - let’s be kind and say, ‘more vulnerable to patriarchal/capitalist messaging’ - so I find it all to easy to sympathise with what drives your friends under the needle. I haven’t had Botox, but it would be a big fat lie to say that was for ideological reasons. I’m just scared of it, and worry it won’t ultimately make me look the way I like.

So if you had come to me with a different kind of message, I might have told you to go ahead with the Botox. Hey, if it’s what you need to walk into the boardroom with your head held high, confidently pursue a new relationship, or just feel fucking amazing about yourself, then the benefits might well outweigh the costs. And so long as we live in a world in which James Bond is 55 and his love interest 22 (seriously though, Daniel Craig and Léa Seydoux have a 17 year age gap), I can imagine it feeling empowering, in a way, to take control of your appearance via Botox - kind of like gaming a system that was rigged against you in the first place; a cheat code against systemic injustice.

But I don’t get this sense from your letter - the sense that Botox is something you really need to feel good. In fact, while your message is full of disappointment and frustration, it is notably free from anxiety about your own appearance. The only thing you seem worried about when it comes to growing older is that the choice you’ve made, or your different physicality, will create a kind of barrier between you and your friends. (Ironically, as I think you know yourself, it is currently your judgement of your friends’ choices which is separating you from them the most keenly.)

This is why I don’t think you should get Botox. You feel such justifiable outrage about the pressure women face to look young that it would clearly be out of whack with your deepest values. Like Dorian, you’d risk making your appearance a mask; something which hides an important truth about your inner life. Living in that disconnected way is neither personally enjoyable, nor sexy to others, if that’s something you care about. It sounds corny, but I really believe that any short term gains won by smoothing out your face would not be outweighed by the long term satisfaction of knowing you truly believed something, and lived up to that belief in your choices, despite an ambient pressure to do otherwise.

But you also need to stop judging your friends. They are not the enemy. One way to do this is to reconnect with them, truthfully and kindly, without betraying yourself. Instead of sympathising with them about the horror of wrinkles, sympathise with the fact they feel bad about their bodies - because that is sad. Then you can say, ‘I hate the way middle-aged women are made to feel invisible’ or ‘I hate that men aren’t sitting around having these same discussions’. No doubt they will agree with you, and you can find some common ground, even if you are choosing different ways to process the pressure. Perhaps this shared vulnerability will lead to a more nuanced discussion about the issues at hand.

I also think putting the Botox decision unequivocally to bed might help you feel less resentment. Right now, you are annoyed with your friends partly because you feel they are tempting you to betray yourself - but if you just decide you’re brave enough to do your own thing, then at least that crisis will be over. Far more importantly, you will win back valuable head space to put towards doing whatever excites and delights you as an empowered and attractive 38-year-old. Because currently, you are in a lose-lose situation; spending just as much time as your friends worrying about cosmetic procedures without even reaping any of the supposed benefits. Liberate yourself from this internal conflict, and I think you will feel less bitter.

Because here’s my final thing. I told you I don’t feel any judgement toward women who choose to get Botox, and I really mean it. But I do know how I feel when I meet a woman who feels excited about aging: not someone who’s anti-Botox from a place of moral superiority, but because they’re genuinely in love with their changing face. It’s like the relief of a cool glass of water, of unbuckling your trousers, of dancing in the way you feel most free. It’s also really hot. Kate Winslet is such a good example of this for me: she is someone who has publicly and proudly decided to tap out of the anti-wrinkle movement, and instead locate her sexiness in the very fact of her age, rather than in spite of it. (Sure, it helps that she’s unbelievably beautiful, but then she does also face immense pressure to conform to Hollywood beauty standards.) Kate Winslet always seems so at ease with herself that I fully believe it when she says she takes pride in her wrinkles, ‘because it is my life on my face’. My mum is another example of what you might stand to gain from being curious about and open to aging and all its signs. Not only does her attitude leave her with very little fear about the passage of time, it also leaves her with a great deal of deep-rooted self-acceptance: every decade of her life, my mum has told me she likes the way she looks now more than ever. (And when she was about 55, she told me she got hit on more than ever, too, so make of that what you will.) It’s also so infectiously delightful when younger women like

Florence Given

declare that ‘aging is fucking hot’. (If you scoff and think this is easy for a 26-year-old to say, bear in mind that the age bracket most interested in Botox is the 18-34s.) But here’s Florence Given, offering a different perspective:

I can’t wait for the depth of my life’s cumulative years of experience, heartbreak, joy, and laughter to show in the way I talk, how I create art, how I dress and in the lines that will show on my skin.

Basically, when the dominant messaging is fear and shame, it feels so goddamn amazing to see women love the things they’re supposed to dislike about themselves fully and unconditionally. All these women make me feel like I might genuinely enjoy seeing decades of increased spiritual, emotional, and intellectual maturity reflected in my face. And I really get the sense, from the passion in your letter, and from the fact you don’t seem to have many pathologies about aging in the first place, that you could learn to feel this way too - if you don’t already. So not to be selfish or anything, but women like me need women like you to channel their simmering outrage into defiant self-love. I don’t mean in a sacrificial lamb type of way (I hope), but as someone I can look up to; who can give me the confidence to love my own aging body more as well.

Right now you and all your friends seem stuck in a quagmire of self-loathing, frustration and resentment. Anger at systems which make people hate themselves is more than justified - but nothing will change unless you find a way to redirect that feeling. I think the best thing you could do for both yourself and your friends is to try and adopt a new way of being; one which embraces the genuine erotic charge of refusing to despise yourself - or, even better, actively delighting in your own, ever-changing appearance. Then who knows? Maybe your friends will start to fall in love with themselves more, too. Joy is the only thing more contagious than insecurity.

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And, there is lots of amazing writing about Botox and beauty standards on Substack! This piece by

Hannah Betts

, about the ‘two tribes’ of Ozempic embracers vs. Ozempic refuseniks is very good and funny. This piece by

Diana Fox Tilson, LICSW

about her parasocial relationship with Anne Hathaway is also funny and poignant.

* This is the correct spelling of Addams. I know it looks weird, I don’t make the rules.