Botox is now as normal as dying your hair or getting your eyebrows done – and many people now feel a “subtle societal pressure” to get involved.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, author and podcaster Stefanie Preissner said people never used to talk about their Botox or fillers – but now they wear it like a badge of honour.

She said the change has increased pressure on people to get on bandwagon.

“It is not an overt pressure,” she said. “Nobody is saying, you should do this, you have to do this, but like anything else, it is kind of a subtle pressure you seem to pick up on. It is kind of like everyone dying their hair or everyone wearing a particular brand of shoes.

“This has become - I don’t know if I only noticed since people took off their masks - as common as eyebrow waxing, and it’s often happening in the same places.

“People just seem to be going around with these fuller lips that are also like tinted. They tint the skin on their lips. The frown lines have gone. If I tell someone something surprising, I can’t tell if they’re surprised or not – I’m not getting a reaction.

“But they look great and I think it has just become so common now that people are like, ‘yeah I got fillers. Before it was kind of like Fight Club. If you got Botox or fillers, you didn’t tell anyone. You didn’t speak about it. You pretended it didn’t happen.”

Fillers

Stefanie said she now finds herself questioning whether she should be getting the treatment.

“Now people are like, oh yeah this is the person that does my fillers or I just have to go and get my Botox, I’ll meet you for lunch after and because it’s so overt and people are so proud of it - which is great – it’s kind of like, should I be doing this too?

“Am I neglecting myself by not getting these injections into my face?”

“It’s so common now that I’m thinking, maybe I should because I do have frown lines and I do have some wrinkles coming up. Am I allowed to just have them or, because there is a solution, should I be using the solution and not walking around with the lines on my face?”

“I do think that, when the solution is so obvious and so available, people are like why wouldn’t you just [do it]?”

Social media

She said the procedures are now all over Instagram and there is a real worry that people may feel they need fillers to feel normal.

“Maybe it’s because we have spent so long looking at ourselves on Zoom,” she said. “People fell that their basic face, untouched, is not enough and there is a pressure to augment yourself in these ways to make yourself more presentable and that I think is dangerous.”

“If you want to do it because you feel it’s good for your mental health because you feel like you look better, that’s fine but I would be looking to dig down into why do you feel that, when your face looks a certain way, you feel better about yourself?”

Botched

The podcast host said there are also concerns about the lack of regulation for fillers.

“At the end of the day, you are getting people to inject things into your face,” she said. “The thing is that this can go horribly wrong.

“Fillers are not regulated which is the biggest issue I think with it. Botox is regulated and you have to have a qualification to inject Botox, but fillers are not. So, you can go and get your nails done and your hair done and someone injecting into your face, all in the same place.

“Some of them have very little qualification to do that so you see it going wrong.”

“Apart from the regulation, it is just like, is this where we’re at now? Do we have to inject stuff into our face to make ourselves more presentable?”