
Recently, I made a confronting discovery.
Via a very strange sequence of events, I learned that a significant number of my acquaintances – those people who populate my Instagram and Facebook feeds, are my age, and therefore very easy to compare myself to – have been regularly getting Botox.
I felt… silly. I had no idea. It’s only in the last few months that I’ve started to look differently at the way my face scrunches when I smile, and the way my forehead creases when I’m concentrating. I hate being conscious of my own facial expressions, as though there’s something wrong with them, but when I look at any form of media, I notice that no one else’s face really looks like mine. I had started to worry it was my fault, for not moisturising properly, or not drinking enough water, or having too many feelings. So, to be honest, I was relieved when I learned about the Botox.
It wasn’t that I’d done anything wrong, it was just that other people were actively having procedures to remove their lines.
When I really thought about it, it wasn’t so much that these women had been getting injections that bothered me, but more that I had no idea. So when I looked around to gauge what was normal, I was seeing cosmetically enhanced faces, and wondering why on earth mine didn’t look like that.
That’s why a recent photo of The Bachelor’s Alex Nation made me stop mid-scroll and think.