Haley Nahman, popular Substacker and former Man Repeller staffer, was interviewed for a piece on The Cut about The Botox, and wrote about the experience, and about anti-aging more generally.
I always feel weird about articles like this, because I think there are genuinely good reasons not to get Botox, and it seems crazy to start drawing arbitrary lines around who is and is not “allowed” to comment on them.
I will never get cosmetic surgery. I don’t care if you think forty-one is too young to make that claim, or just barely old enough, or whatever. I will never get cosmetic surgery. (I suppose I might get a false breast if I ever have a mastectomy due to breast cancer, but even that would be a careful decision rather than a foregone conclusion).
The main reason I will never get cosmetic surgery is that I think there are deep, important advantages to accepting your body without medical modifications. Obviously, there can be exceptions to this rule. If you’re genuinely ill, for example, then the tradeoff changes completely. If you have gender dysphoria, then perhaps you would indeed benefit more from changing your body than from leaving it unmodified. If, on the other hand, your only reason for wanting a medical modification is that you have a "normal" body and you are stuck living in a society that thinks badly of that normal, then getting the medical procedure compounds the very problem you are suffering from. You are contributing to that scorn toward the normal by making yourself part of a set of standards for appearance that are, in a very real sense, damaging to yourself and to society as a whole.
People are allowed to disapprove of this kind of selfish behaviour no matter their age, because it is genuinely a moral failure.
Your aesthetical preferences are exactly that, your preferences. And let's not pretend saggy boobies are prettier than non-saggy boobies, which isn't saying no one should have natural boobies. Personally, I think excess botox makes people look like mummified clowns, but that's my taste, not the 11th commandment.
I always feel weird about articles like this, because I think there are genuinely good reasons not to get Botox, and it seems crazy to start drawing arbitrary lines around who is and is not “allowed” to comment on them.
I will never get cosmetic surgery. I don’t care if you think forty-one is too young to make that claim, or just barely old enough, or whatever. I will never get cosmetic surgery. (I suppose I might get a false breast if I ever have a mastectomy due to breast cancer, but even that would be a careful decision rather than a foregone conclusion).
The main reason I will never get cosmetic surgery is that I think there are deep, important advantages to accepting your body without medical modifications. Obviously, there can be exceptions to this rule. If you’re genuinely ill, for example, then the tradeoff changes completely. If you have gender dysphoria, then perhaps you would indeed benefit more from changing your body than from leaving it unmodified. If, on the other hand, your only reason for wanting a medical modification is that you have a "normal" body and you are stuck living in a society that thinks badly of that normal, then getting the medical procedure compounds the very problem you are suffering from. You are contributing to that scorn toward the normal by making yourself part of a set of standards for appearance that are, in a very real sense, damaging to yourself and to society as a whole.
People are allowed to disapprove of this kind of selfish behaviour no matter their age, because it is genuinely a moral failure.
Knowing that you think I'm a "moral failure" for occasionally getting Botox makes me want more Botox
Such are the perils of moralizing, I suppose!
Your aesthetical preferences are exactly that, your preferences. And let's not pretend saggy boobies are prettier than non-saggy boobies, which isn't saying no one should have natural boobies. Personally, I think excess botox makes people look like mummified clowns, but that's my taste, not the 11th commandment.
Oh, this isn’t about aesthetics! The question of whether people look better or worse with any given procedure is largely orthogonal to my point.
You're gonna laugh, but I passed on Propecia thinking something like this, and I regret it.
I have not read the Cut piece or Maybe Baby piece but The Cut published this in 2024:
https://www.thecut.com/article/whats-the-best-age-to-start-botox.html?utm_source=nymag_app_article_share