Are we obsessed with looking younger, or the privileges that come with looking younger?

“I disagree with the stance that because it is a choice, Botox is a feminist act.”

This is an edited extract from founder of Cheek Media and co-host of Big Small Talk, Hannah Ferguson’s new book, Taboo (Affirm Press), on sale Tuesday November 12. Find a copy here.

I am anti-Botox and against getting any cosmetic procedures, which feels like an incredibly controversial statement to make in 2024. Let me make this clear: being ‘anti-Botox’ does not make me critical of those who elect to have cosmetic procedures. I do not believe women should do anything to alter their appearance to be respected, employable, successful or considered ‘beautiful’. I want those who elect to get these procedures for aesthetic reasons to be transparent about it.

In a world where ‘baby Botox’ is rife and labiaplasty is one of the fastest-growing cosmetic procedures in the world, I believe it’s our responsibility to ourselves and the next generation to interrogate the industries that want us to be skinny, small and frozen in time. They want to exhaust us physically, mentally, emotionally and financially. This is not about choice or individual agency: it’s about capitalism and patriarchy.

A 2023 study by the University of South Australia found that of the 238 young Australian women aged eighteen to twenty-nine surveyed, 16 per cent had already received cosmetic surgery and 54 per cent were considering having it in the future. My sister is not in a minority; she’s a product of our generation. The data reveals a sharp increase in cosmetic procedures to alter appearances: between 2010 and 2018 procedures doubled from 117,000 to 225,000. When the report was released, seven million Australian adults were considering altering their appearance through cosmetic procedures in the next decade.

It is no great mystery why. TikTok’s ‘ageing filter’, which was described by dermatologists as one of the most accurate depictions of the skin and facial features of our older selves, has been used 27.7 million times and counting. ‘Sephora kids’ is a widely known trend, with ten-year-olds now flooding beauty and skincare stores to buy expensive anti-ageing products that will damage their skin.

According to the data platform Statista, between now and 2028, revenue from the baby and child skincare market is expected to grow at a rate of nearly six per cent each year. As Phillippa Diedrichs, professor of psychology at the University of the West of England, told The Guardian, part of the issue is the expansion of how accessible these procedures are and who offers them: ‘Botox is now advertised at the dentist.’ In Liz Plank’s Substack piece, ‘Can a Feminist get Botox?’, she discusses a lesser-known reality of this cosmetic alteration.

The most worrying and least discussed danger (in my opinion) is that Botox does not just change our faces, it transforms how we feel emotions. New research has found that injections can limit our ability to express certain feelings because our facial muscles simply aren’t able to execute them. Because a core part of human communication is mirroring each other’s emotional expressions, Botox can mean we have trouble empathising with one another. When certain parts of our faces are frozen, it can quite literally make us appear more cold.

The obvious counter-argument to this is, ‘But you wear makeup, so what’s the difference?’. Makeup is also an alteration. If we really drill down into it, so is wearing sunscreen and painting our toenails. Eating and changing clothes also change our physical appearance every single day. There is a clear spectrum of alteration and decision-making.

I see a distinction between tinted sunscreen and having a needle penetrate your skin to fill you with toxins to paralyse your facial features in the pursuit of a perpetually youthful appearance. I do agree that makeup has deep repercussions for gender equality – but it is also an art form that has been largely reclaimed. Makeup is now definitively understood to be a centrepiece of performance art, entertainment, drag and theatre. We are also slowly seeing a transition into acceptance of boys and men wearing makeup and women choosing not to.

While I do not believe any person should feel the need to wear makeup in their day-to-day life in order to feel professional or receive workplace privileges because of their appearance, using foundation and an eyebrow pencil for a work function is significantly different to injecting plastic in your chin to change the geography of your face.

I do not believe makeup is entirely exempt from challenge, having experienced at nineteen a boss who sent me home for looking ‘sick’ when I just wasn’t wearing mascara that day. But the health risks, complications, costs, level of alteration and permanency of cosmetic procedures is vastly different to wearing makeup.

No one should be treated differently for any choice not to engage with the beauty industry, but the high risks associated with procedures like breast implants and augmentation, and the reported side effects (fatigue, difficulty breathing, slurred speech and muscle paralysis) associated with Botox illustrate the seriousness of these decisions we make. There is a line between superficial application and surgical alteration. While all these behaviours play, in some way, to the gaze of patriarchy, the costs, the risks and the pain associated with makeup versus cosmetic procedures sit on opposite ends of the scale.

When women do not have Botox, they are called old. When women have enough Botox that it is noticeable, that is considered a different category of ugly or undesirable by all members of society. I’m interested in the relationship between the projection of ourselves and our actual selves. I refuse to criticise an individual for their personal decision to alter their physical appearance.

But I disagree with the stance that because it is a choice, Botox is a feminist act. We know choice feminism, which supports the view that anything a woman does is inherently feminist, is a ‘get out of jail free card’ that removes our responsibility and subsequently undermines our agency in distinguishing right from wrong. It is impossible to detach these choices from the broader social context we exist in that tells all people, and predominantly women, that their bodies are something to be fixed. By getting Botox, we are contributing to patriarchy, and I believe it’s in a more significant way than by using makeup or skincare.

Men want women to have enough work done to not look their age, but not so much that it’s clear they’ve altered themselves. Ah, the dichotomy of a ‘natural’ beauty. Its wealth and privilege concealed. Whether it’s Ozempic or Brazilian butt lifts (you’ll see them called BBLs), my primary concern is not that the act is antifeminist, but that it allows a cohort of the world’s rich and famous to create and uphold a standard of beauty that others will damage their health trying to achieve.

In the process, teenage girls will go into debt for a body they can’t achieve – a body they will risk their lives to achieve. I often wonder if people are obsessed with meeting social beauty standards and if they actually feel better in smaller, altered bodies – or if they are just obsessed with the privileges that come with them.

This is an individual choice, and I am not asking you to stop. Many of my friends have had work done. But I want you to think about what your choice means. What does it mean for your finances? What does it mean for your mental health? Why is our first instinct to change ourselves physically, rather than attempt to change our psychology towards ourselves?

Keep up with Hannah here.