It can not be denied the benefits of the treatment of Botox for its users. But whether having Botox too soon could you give effects as you wish or not?
In 1992, the average age of the patients of using Botox of doctors Alastair and Jean Carruthers who published their first paper on the anti-wrinkle effect of Botox was 41 years. Nowadays, the users of Botox tend to be younger, even some little girls also begin using Botox. But whether having Botox too soon could you give effects as you wish or not?
Last month, an eight-year-old girl from California was taken to hospital to take care because her mum, Kerry Campbell, injected her with Botox. She said on television that her daughter insisted having the treatment to take away the wrinkles when she smiles.
The fact mothers inject their daughters with Botox is not rare. Another mum in Britain, Sarah Burge, shocked the media when she told that she was giving her her 15-year-old daughter Botox injections, coining the phrase “teen-toxing” in the process. Regardless widespread condemnation, the mothers thought they did their daughters a favour to prevent wrinkles in adulthood.
Cosmetic specialists warn the trend of teenage Botox. Botox was used to treat men and women with moderate to serve frown lines. Now more and more men and women in their early twenties have Botox as a preventative of wrinkles in future. In addition, a number of stars seem a good example for young girls follow this trend. It is like the latest must-have handbag: young girls want it – and the sooner the better.
The 18-year-old star of the TV series Glee, Chalice Pempengco said that she wanted to have the procedure ““to look fresh on camera”. The 25-year-old British actress Carey Mulligan (An Education; Pride & Prejudice), Lindsay Lohan and Hillary Duff, Kim Kardashian are among the so-called “Botox Babies”, under pressure to maintain their youthful profile.
Make-up artist Sadie Jean Sloss, who worked on Britain’s Next Top Model and Make Me a Supermodel UK, advocates under-age Botox. He argues there is no reason why people should not be using Botox by their mid-twenties. Jean Schloss, who is 28 and runs a popular beauty parlour, Dolly Leo, in Edinburgh, says many women are doing Botox in their twenties because of a lot of pressure to look young. He said: “At 25 or 26, it slows down the ageing process because the muscles aren’t contracting. People have heard of these things and they want to try them.”
However, who advocates of under-age Botox do not realise is that children and adolescents do not have wrinkles: they have facial expression, and the two are not the same. Bartering normal facial expression at such a young age and at such an important stage of social development, in the hope it may stave off wrinkles in adult life while hyper-expression may eventually lead to wrinkles is surely a sacrifice too far.
The extremely point here is that there is no evidence that in the long term Botox works as a preventative, nor is there any license to use it as such. The mechanism of the drug is to relax the muscles responsible for expression lines and is licensed only for the treatment of moderate to severe frown lines.
Even having Botox treatment too soon ultimately could do more harm to your looks than good. Look at the photographs of a Hollywood legend, Elizabeth Taylor at each her eight weddings (almost consistently five years apart) to recognize the evolution of her looks. Although she was clearly always a beautiful woman from her teens onwards, but arguably her looks did not reach their peak until she was in her mid-thirties. If Botox had been available to Taylor in her early twenties , would she have ever that same level of mature beauty for which she will now always be remembered? It is probably not.
Botox can be a powerful and effective treatment for those who are in the middle age because it halts the decline of the face structure. For some, can restore self-esteem lost through the process of ageing. However, long-term overuse of the drug can lead to atrophy of the muscles, which can be particularly noticeable around the eyes, where the face can appear inadvertently aged – despite the lack of wrinkles. Especially, having Botox too early may lead the undesirable results over time; and could make you loose the best looks you were ever destined to have.