The Botox blues: how Botox changed the way I look at myself

“You look too young for Botox,” the practice owner said as I got up from the waiting room chair.

The clinic was Scandi as ever, light wood, beige tones, Vitamin C serums with triple-digit price tags. There was a framed photo of a French Bulldog on the wall wearing a pink bow tie. His forehead folds looked like mine. The only difference was that he hadn’t spent £75 on a consultation to chat about having them frozen off.

I’d never really fancied Botox. It always felt a bit…dystopian. Some friends had succumbed to societal pressure and were no longer able to raise their eyebrows in disbelief at shared ‘what’s-new-with-you’ stories. Injecting poison into your face in order to stop expressing emotions just felt off to me. And emotions? I have plenty.

Besides, it wasn’t like trying out blue eyeliner in the 90s or fashioning faux-fur coats and collapsing Ugg boots. It wasn’t something you could wipe off vigorously with a wet wipe. Botox was bigger and more drastic. And not just on the bank balance. Can you get Botox for that?

One friend swore by it. She said she’d got it to banish her frown lines, justified that it was more for medical reasons because she suffered from headaches. “It’s sitting at the desk all day, I think the screen is making me frown.’’ Curious, I looked in the mirror that night while brushing my teeth. And there they were. Like they’d overheard the conversation and thought," Ooh! We’re up!” As if summoned by the phrase, “I’ve never noticed your frown lines before”, they stood to attention, rising to the surface like little creased flags of ageing. My thoughts rose to the occasion, too: “Hold on a minute… I work at a computer all day… I probably get headaches sometimes, right? THAT’S IT. WE’RE GETTING BOTOX BABY!!"

After that, I couldn't unnotice the frown lines carved from too much screen time, the general public and the disbelief at some of life’s what-the-heck moments over the years. I booked in for a consultation. That’s all it would be, a consultation. A £75 quick chat in a fluorescently lit room. And while I’m there, I may as well ask the inquire about a little something for the crow’s feet. (We really couldn’t have called them something softer? Dove’s toes?)

Anyway, the moment the practice owner told me I looked too young for Botox, that should have been it. That should have been a fulfilling enough outcome. A more affordable one, too. Botox? Completed it, mate. Didn’t even touch the sides. A pro face-freezer/wrinkle wizard tells me I look too young for Botox? I should have walked out then and there, head held high.

But, she had some more home truths for me first.

She was in pink scrubs, armed with a clipboard and a pace that could rival the London Underground. She told me, while shading in the corner of the initial consultation page, that she'd left the city for a “slower pace of life” in Devon, yet she spoke faster than the side disclaimer on a drink responsibly advert.

My eyebrows raised and my forehead crinkled as she boasted about the financial success of her London Clinic. She stopped scribbling and looked at my forehead. “We could definitely do something about that.”

Which was weird, because I hadn’t been particularly bothered about that part of my head. My forehead had always been...expressive. My brother used to call me Klingon when I grew up. I didn’t realise what it meant at the time and took it as I had always wanted attention and to be held (some things never change). I could make the lines dance like puppets. I’d even sent a photo to the girls' chat once, asking if it looked more like a forehead or an arse crack. I’d grown fond of it. It was a part of me. Character, or something.

But she had other ideas.

She kept repeating how thorough she was in her consultations. I couldn't argue with that as she proceeded to point out the subtle rosacea on my cheeks. Suggested salmon sperm. Yes. Salmon sperm - as the latest miracle fix. The classic “all the celebrities are getting it” was thrown in, like a quote lifted straight from Hello! magazine. It was delivered with such sincerity that I had to sit there and try not to laugh; partly at the absurdity of the conversation, partly at the fact that I was still sitting there, nodding along. Salmon spunk? Really? I thought to myself, momentarily transported to some questionable flings in my early twenties - the ones I’d firmly denied the privilege. And yet here I was, being asked to give a salmon the honour.

She went on (I know!) to comment that my dark under-eye circles could be eradicated, too. That we could Botox above the brow for my heavy eyelids. “And the chin,” she added, gently pushing mine upward with a manicured finger. “That’ll deepen with age, so you may want to consider getting some there too.’’

My CHIN?! Not the chin! I suddenly felt like a cheap old doer-upper of a building. She was the new owner, busying about, gutting the place. Get rid of that, knock down this, fill that in, paint over that. I was a human bloody renovation project.

Everything I’d learned to accept about myself was now up for discussion. And even the parts I hadn’t needed to learn to accept, because I’d never really noticed them before, were being thrown under the fluorescent lights. I went in about frown lines and left filled with wrinkle-inducing, ugly shame about my forehead, my skin, my eyes… and now my chin, too?

I stared at myself in the handheld mirror. She kept talking as she jolted up to grab a small box off her shelf. It had various creams inside.

“Best kind for Rosacea and dry skin. Vitamin C. Travel size, too. Only £50, you can use your deposit for it and put the remaining £20 towards your Botox. Are we just doing the brow today, or shall we do the forehead now, too?” I took the box from her to stare at something other than my monstrosity of a face.

“Today? Do you have time?”

“Yes, I’ve got time. If we do it now.” She spoke with urgency. I just hoped she wouldn’t rush the procedure as much as she’d rushed everything else.

I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t walk out of that room with my puffy eyelids, salmon-spermless cheeks and under-eye bags the size of the new borrower-size cream I was about to spend £50 on. Somehow, Botox now felt like the bare minimum. It was the least I could do to ease the full inventory of facial flaws I’d just been handed.

The procedure was over quickly. Every injection felt like a small prick to my pride. I couldn’t believe I was actually doing it. And so, £340 later, I walked free from the interrogation room, feeling much less confident and acceptable-looking than when I went in.

When I left the clinic, I cried. I felt deceptive, embarrassed, like I’d let myself down somehow. I hadn’t told anyone; I hadn’t even told my partner. Afterall, I was just going in for a consultation.

Over the next few days, I didn’t notice a difference. I kept raising my eyebrows in the mirror but my forehead still creased. My frown lines seemed fiercer, too, likely because I had been ruminating so much on the intense exchange at the clinic.

Then one morning... it didn’t. My forehead didn’t crease up. It was so odd. I liked it, but I didn’t all at once…and in the days that followed, I found myself staring into mirrors the way you stare at an ex’s social media account: all too often, and with a mix of obsession, curiosity and disappointment.

My expression was muted from the brow up. The playful eyebrow raises I used to rely on to lighten a room or call out someone’s nonsense? Gone. But I wasn’t satisfied, of course. It was almost like freezing the movement in my forehead shone a spotlight on everything else. The clinic owners' face and voice echoed in my mind like a floating disembodied head in a surrealist film, repeating on loop:

“You see, I’m very thorough.”

“We could also put some Botox above the brow… just to plump that area up.”

“I see you’ve got quite heavy eyelids.”

“And the dimple in your chin, it’s alright now, but as you get older…”

“Salmon sperm ssalmonnnnn spermmmmm ssssalmonnn spermmmmm.’’

I had traded in one insecurity for about five others. Not exactly a fair exchange.

I liken Botox to pulling a thread on a jumper. You go in for a quick frown fix, but once you start pulling, the whole thing begins to unravel. And suddenly, you’re standing in front of the mirror thinking, Was my chin always like that? or When did my eyes start looking tired? Should I pay £400+ for fish jizz? Or worse…

WHY AM I STILL NOT PERFECT?!

Ah, here it was again, the need to be perfect. And now here I was… mourning the pre-botox me that hadn’t been so thoroughly inspected under a ring light and a pink clipboard.

Because Botox, upon reflection, wasn’t about the lines. It was about control. About trying to smooth out the parts of myself that felt imperfect.

And perfectionism is something I’ve long been fascinated by - mostly because it lives in all of us. The need to be good. To be enough. But perfection is a myth centred upon chasing the unattainable. And Botox, I realised, was just another way of trying to freeze what can’t be controlled: time, ageing, emotion, impermanence, the spectacle of being human.

That’s part of why I’m writing Imperfectly Human and why I started the Imperfectly Human Club. Because I want to live in a world where we celebrate the cracks and not panic and plaster over them. Where we don’t rush to erase the evidence that we’ve been here, felt things, cried over men and our parents and our friends, loved and lost and laughed and lived. Without sounding too much like the italics written on a canvas from Amazon…

Eight months on, I haven’t rebooked. No one has even noticed it’s worn off. No one has stopped me on the street with a horrified look of recognition: “YOUR BOTOX HAS GONE. WHERE IS IT?” No one cares about my face because they are too preoccupied with living behind their own.

After about four months, I started raising my eyebrows again. And with them, a few uncomfortable realisations surfaced. I’m not ruling it out forever. I’ve learned ‘never again’ is just another sneaky form of perfectionism. But these days, I’m more interested in getting to accept the face I wake up with. It moves when I laugh and folds with frustration. It moves how it should and wants to move, even if that includes those ski-slope lines,tired-can’t-even-blame-being-a-mum-eyes, or dimpled chin that will apparently worsen with age.

So no, I wouldn’t recommend it. What I would recommend is considering that maybe we’ve all been sold a lie that we’d be more lovable with less of ourselves showing. Yet, truthfully, all of us, just as we are, as we inevitably age and unfold, are already worth looking at. And no amount of poison-filled pin pricks or salmon sperm is ever going to change that.