I have to admit I was pretty surprised when I read these numbers.
Botox is now being used by men, some of whom did not even run for President. The number of men in the U.S. who paid to get a series of tiny injections in their face nearly tripled from 2001 to 2007–to 300,000, or about 7% of the total Botoxed population. And despite the recession, those numbers aren’t going down yet; one of the many things the laid-off cannot afford is to look their age.
Men usually get Botox to remove those two vertical lines between their eyebrows that make them look angry and confused and thus, one could argue, masculine. They also use the product to smooth out the horizontal creases in their foreheads, though, unlike women, they don’t tend to worry about crow’s feet. Men do, however, fret a lot more about the pain. “They get so jacked up worrying that it will hurt,” says Botox enthusiast and nine-time Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz. “Maybe that’s why women have babies and we don’t.”
When 1970s Olympic heroes–and mustachioed ones at that–get work done, it would seem to mark social acceptability among guys. Spitz, though, is a spokesman for Allergan, the company that makes Botox and has started to market directly to men via its website. Sure, Spitz first considered getting the world’s most common cosmetic procedure after a friend, former Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci, told him that the wrinkles between his eyes made him look old and overly serious, but he got a whole lot more interested when Allergan started paying him.
Everyone is obsessed with looking younger, so we shouldn’t be surprised by this.
