"Culturally, we do not prioritize deep feeling, or a full experience of life. We prioritize status and aestheticizing our lives, and we’re rewarded for that." Wow ok yes!!
I’ve been thinking of writing something about how beauty standards are the culprit for the sex recession or whatever, so I love this post. I’ll have to link to it.
Excellent! Reminds me of this Audre Lorde quote that one of PE Moscowitz’ users commented recently:
“We have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling. The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.”
I was struck by that piece you linked to a while ago about AI images, and how it said the vast majority of images of women that AI pulls from to create a “beautiful woman” is from porn. It feels like not only are our beauty standards deeply enmeshed in porn as an industry, but Botox itself seems like it plays into a porn-ethic of what beauty is: the expedient at the expense of the real and complex.
Very interesting topic and agree more study is needed. After all, some significant amount of Botox users are middle aged, which can be a challenging time in life: long term marriages start to strain, kids and career can be overwhelming, society acceptance of aginging is crap which is depressing and testosterone/estrogen start to decline to name a few things. So how control a large study for these factors for less sex while trying to understand Botox's possible effects on communication? I love your work and hope it continues to inspire readers to dig deeper personally and professionally. Thank you!
It really bums me out when I hear young women describe Botox as a "need" in the future in order to still be seen as beautiful. It is so disconnecting to change your face, particularly to change your face in a way that doesn't allow you to emote, and yet so many women (and some men) think it will help them have more meaningful lives and relationships. Beauty at the cost of humanity...
As I’ve approached my mid-late 30s and also become disabled, I’ve thought a lot about the messaging young women receive about how once you hit a certain age as a woman, you’re invisible. People don’t open doors for you, they may serve the person behind you in line instead of you, etc.
And I think this creates a deep existential fear in most women (it certainly did in me), because we are taught from a young age that our currency and our power come only from how we hew to the male gaze. We are rewarded for performing a certain version of woman that is coded as beauty (but is really reflective of white supremacist, fat phobic, ableist norms), and that is the only way we are *seen.*
So not performing beauty, or no longer being able to perform beauty, is like severing our lifeline to power, prestige, and currency.
Which is somewhat true.
But when you start to become invisible, you realize that was never actual power. And there is freedom to not being constantly surveilled through the beauty panopticon.
It’s all a lie that’s served to us to keep us occupied and spending money, while men have far more free time, brain space, and money to pursue the things that actually create a good life (or a terrible world).
So incredibly true - it makes my brain spin to think about the time, energy, and money that are spent trying to be relevant in a patriarchal society... when the backbone of a patriarchal society is to keep women from having relevance.
YES. Yes. I love this. I’ve been on a similar mind roll lately. I’ve been researching the root cause of this sexlessness and believe it to not be wholly disconnected from your point here. It’s part of what’s fueling my new Substack project and a bigger project too.
yesss love the name drop of everyone is beautiful and no one is horny. and i think more studies should be done to sorta confirm that hypothesis about botox, but in a larger sense i agree that it’s played a part. the philosophy of optimization born from moralizing productivity in a capitalist career/entrepreneurial sense has found another home in beauty culture. if optimization and productivity are Moral, something like eroticism which isn’t concerned with what’s Moral, is gonna be antithetical
This explains why I hate watching actors who've had botox! They can't do their job properly, because they look like talking paintings; the emotional connection isn't there!
i am an actress, and i’ve definitely been tempted with injectables because you are talked about like a prop. i’ve had makeup artists say “make sure you do lifting makeup on her” as if i can’t hear them, or that i look too old to play a person close to my age. i totally understand the temptation as a woman too because it SEEMS like you’ll work more, for longer as your beauty, but more importantly your youthfulness, remains. that being said, i fucking hate the botoxed faces of american actors. everything is smoothed out and boring, and i love watching european actors because they have lines and bad teeth and these ugly beautiful faces (big noses stay big, pocked skin is shown, etc. i happen to think big noses are really sexy on men and women) and we just don’t see that with actors in the states. i had an acting coach suggest to her class!!!!! insanity.
Jess! As always- grateful for you. I was on TikTok a few weeks ago and a creator was like "my face is moving and this is an issue." I also watched the New Zealand soccer team's Haka dance today and it looked like a few of them had botox, so their foreheads had no expression. I'm turning 44 soon and noticing how the prevalence of botox is affecting my self-perception as my face changes and ages. It takes so much work to look at myself in the mirror and *appreciate* my facial expressions and how they have etched emotions into my face rather than dislike them. I hate it.
i was just about to comment about the haka!!!! it’s sooooo powerful when they can use their full ferocity and make the intense expressions, and some of them couldn’t raise their eyebrows very far :(
I'm a dual-licensed massage therapist and cosmetologist, and a particular area of interest and continuing education I am drawn to is the emotional and physiological interplay of our faces. I do therapeutic facial massage because I am trying to untangle care and aesthetics from our faces as much as possible. There is so much truth here! Thank you for writing about this!
Thank you for the very interesting and thoughtful piece. I just want to make a suggestion, from the viewpoint of a scientist.
I would always recommend linking directly to the scientific article that presents the original data, not a news article discussing the data. This allows people who wish to review the data themselves to get to it more directly and also lowers the possibility of misinterpretations. For example, for two of your sources you link to a Psychology Today article and a NYTimes article, neither of which are peer-reviewed journals. While the links in the Psychology Today article all seem to lead to the peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts that contain the original data, not all the NYTimes links do, making it impossible to go back to the original source to double check they are interpreting the science properly. I understand that the NYTimes feels like a trusted source, and I am sure they are most of the time. But I have noticed that they are not exactly the most diligent with linking to their sources when it comes to their pop-science articles.
For-profit news outlets are important sources for information; of course they are. But they will always have an incentive to ‘sexify’ the information, if you will. But real science is seldom black and white and seldom sexy. For example, while some of the original scientific manuscripts did find links between a reduced range of facial expressions and individuals ability to interpret emotions, not all them concluded that the effects were meaningful or significant. The conclusions of ‘Impact of Glabellar Paralysis on Facial Expression of Emotion’ by Wyffels et al., 2019, which was linked in the Psychology Today article, was: “We believe these findings provide a measure of reassurance to patients and their providers that the use of onabotulinum toxin A to paralyze the glabellar musculature for aesthetic purposes may not pose a meaningful risk to the overall ability to express emotion during social interaction.” This conclusion was left out of The Psychology Today article, perhaps because it did not fit the narrative of the news story.
I know this all sounds nitpicky. But it’s like the game Telephone. Nuances and facts tend to get lost as conversations get farther and farther away from the source.
That is a great question. Unfortunately, I do not know of such a site. The best place to search across all scientific articles published is still google scholar: https://scholar.google.com. It is very bare-bones, but is the only one I know that searches across all domains. Most scientific articles have an abstract on the first page that summarizes the research; often times these abstracts include a summary, like the one I highlighted above. Often times it is possible to get an overview of the findings without having to go into the nitty gritty of the research. But I agree with you- there should be some sort of free, publicly available place for non-scientists to get updated on scientific findings using everyday language. I would guess this does not exist because our society does not put inherent value on the spread of information, unless the information can be commercialized or politicized.
"The paradox of Botox is that so many of us get it because we think it will enhance our lives. What we’re actually doing is 1) perpetuating the standard that made us feel bad in the first place" GAH!!! This is why I no longer get Botox - mostly due to being a subscriber here. I don't want to perpetuate the standard anymore! (btw, my photo here is at least a decade old) time to change it.
The fallacy lies in thinking that with neurotoxins, like Botox, it's has to be all or nothing. Yes, some women choose a "frozen" look. But many women choose a natural look, which allows them to still express but relax the wrinkles enough so that they don't form deep lines and wrinkles.
"Culturally, we do not prioritize deep feeling, or a full experience of life. We prioritize status and aestheticizing our lives, and we’re rewarded for that." Wow ok yes!!
I’ve been thinking of writing something about how beauty standards are the culprit for the sex recession or whatever, so I love this post. I’ll have to link to it.
Excellent! Reminds me of this Audre Lorde quote that one of PE Moscowitz’ users commented recently:
“We have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling. The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.”
I was struck by that piece you linked to a while ago about AI images, and how it said the vast majority of images of women that AI pulls from to create a “beautiful woman” is from porn. It feels like not only are our beauty standards deeply enmeshed in porn as an industry, but Botox itself seems like it plays into a porn-ethic of what beauty is: the expedient at the expense of the real and complex.
👏
This was the [great] piece the comment was under:
https://mentalhellth.xyz/p/art-is-now-porn
Very interesting topic and agree more study is needed. After all, some significant amount of Botox users are middle aged, which can be a challenging time in life: long term marriages start to strain, kids and career can be overwhelming, society acceptance of aginging is crap which is depressing and testosterone/estrogen start to decline to name a few things. So how control a large study for these factors for less sex while trying to understand Botox's possible effects on communication? I love your work and hope it continues to inspire readers to dig deeper personally and professionally. Thank you!
It really bums me out when I hear young women describe Botox as a "need" in the future in order to still be seen as beautiful. It is so disconnecting to change your face, particularly to change your face in a way that doesn't allow you to emote, and yet so many women (and some men) think it will help them have more meaningful lives and relationships. Beauty at the cost of humanity...
As I’ve approached my mid-late 30s and also become disabled, I’ve thought a lot about the messaging young women receive about how once you hit a certain age as a woman, you’re invisible. People don’t open doors for you, they may serve the person behind you in line instead of you, etc.
And I think this creates a deep existential fear in most women (it certainly did in me), because we are taught from a young age that our currency and our power come only from how we hew to the male gaze. We are rewarded for performing a certain version of woman that is coded as beauty (but is really reflective of white supremacist, fat phobic, ableist norms), and that is the only way we are *seen.*
So not performing beauty, or no longer being able to perform beauty, is like severing our lifeline to power, prestige, and currency.
Which is somewhat true.
But when you start to become invisible, you realize that was never actual power. And there is freedom to not being constantly surveilled through the beauty panopticon.
It’s all a lie that’s served to us to keep us occupied and spending money, while men have far more free time, brain space, and money to pursue the things that actually create a good life (or a terrible world).
So incredibly true - it makes my brain spin to think about the time, energy, and money that are spent trying to be relevant in a patriarchal society... when the backbone of a patriarchal society is to keep women from having relevance.
YES. Yes. I love this. I’ve been on a similar mind roll lately. I’ve been researching the root cause of this sexlessness and believe it to not be wholly disconnected from your point here. It’s part of what’s fueling my new Substack project and a bigger project too.
You work for MLNP! Thank you so much for your work!! Im looking forward to checking out those other projects you mention :)
❤️ so thrilled you know us!!
yesss love the name drop of everyone is beautiful and no one is horny. and i think more studies should be done to sorta confirm that hypothesis about botox, but in a larger sense i agree that it’s played a part. the philosophy of optimization born from moralizing productivity in a capitalist career/entrepreneurial sense has found another home in beauty culture. if optimization and productivity are Moral, something like eroticism which isn’t concerned with what’s Moral, is gonna be antithetical
This explains why I hate watching actors who've had botox! They can't do their job properly, because they look like talking paintings; the emotional connection isn't there!
i am an actress, and i’ve definitely been tempted with injectables because you are talked about like a prop. i’ve had makeup artists say “make sure you do lifting makeup on her” as if i can’t hear them, or that i look too old to play a person close to my age. i totally understand the temptation as a woman too because it SEEMS like you’ll work more, for longer as your beauty, but more importantly your youthfulness, remains. that being said, i fucking hate the botoxed faces of american actors. everything is smoothed out and boring, and i love watching european actors because they have lines and bad teeth and these ugly beautiful faces (big noses stay big, pocked skin is shown, etc. i happen to think big noses are really sexy on men and women) and we just don’t see that with actors in the states. i had an acting coach suggest to her class!!!!! insanity.
suggest to her class to get botox***
would love to hear a convo between you and Esther Perel on beauty, sex, eroticism, connection, emotional well-being.
Jess! As always- grateful for you. I was on TikTok a few weeks ago and a creator was like "my face is moving and this is an issue." I also watched the New Zealand soccer team's Haka dance today and it looked like a few of them had botox, so their foreheads had no expression. I'm turning 44 soon and noticing how the prevalence of botox is affecting my self-perception as my face changes and ages. It takes so much work to look at myself in the mirror and *appreciate* my facial expressions and how they have etched emotions into my face rather than dislike them. I hate it.
i was just about to comment about the haka!!!! it’s sooooo powerful when they can use their full ferocity and make the intense expressions, and some of them couldn’t raise their eyebrows very far :(
So it wasn't just me!! They couldn't raise their eyebrows or furrow them- and furrowing the eyebrows is also such a powerful part of that tradition.
I'm a dual-licensed massage therapist and cosmetologist, and a particular area of interest and continuing education I am drawn to is the emotional and physiological interplay of our faces. I do therapeutic facial massage because I am trying to untangle care and aesthetics from our faces as much as possible. There is so much truth here! Thank you for writing about this!
Thank you for the very interesting and thoughtful piece. I just want to make a suggestion, from the viewpoint of a scientist.
I would always recommend linking directly to the scientific article that presents the original data, not a news article discussing the data. This allows people who wish to review the data themselves to get to it more directly and also lowers the possibility of misinterpretations. For example, for two of your sources you link to a Psychology Today article and a NYTimes article, neither of which are peer-reviewed journals. While the links in the Psychology Today article all seem to lead to the peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts that contain the original data, not all the NYTimes links do, making it impossible to go back to the original source to double check they are interpreting the science properly. I understand that the NYTimes feels like a trusted source, and I am sure they are most of the time. But I have noticed that they are not exactly the most diligent with linking to their sources when it comes to their pop-science articles.
For-profit news outlets are important sources for information; of course they are. But they will always have an incentive to ‘sexify’ the information, if you will. But real science is seldom black and white and seldom sexy. For example, while some of the original scientific manuscripts did find links between a reduced range of facial expressions and individuals ability to interpret emotions, not all them concluded that the effects were meaningful or significant. The conclusions of ‘Impact of Glabellar Paralysis on Facial Expression of Emotion’ by Wyffels et al., 2019, which was linked in the Psychology Today article, was: “We believe these findings provide a measure of reassurance to patients and their providers that the use of onabotulinum toxin A to paralyze the glabellar musculature for aesthetic purposes may not pose a meaningful risk to the overall ability to express emotion during social interaction.” This conclusion was left out of The Psychology Today article, perhaps because it did not fit the narrative of the news story.
I know this all sounds nitpicky. But it’s like the game Telephone. Nuances and facts tend to get lost as conversations get farther and farther away from the source.
Do you know if there is a website that has searchable peer reviewed studies with explanations that a non-scientist could understand?
That is a great question. Unfortunately, I do not know of such a site. The best place to search across all scientific articles published is still google scholar: https://scholar.google.com. It is very bare-bones, but is the only one I know that searches across all domains. Most scientific articles have an abstract on the first page that summarizes the research; often times these abstracts include a summary, like the one I highlighted above. Often times it is possible to get an overview of the findings without having to go into the nitty gritty of the research. But I agree with you- there should be some sort of free, publicly available place for non-scientists to get updated on scientific findings using everyday language. I would guess this does not exist because our society does not put inherent value on the spread of information, unless the information can be commercialized or politicized.
"The paradox of Botox is that so many of us get it because we think it will enhance our lives. What we’re actually doing is 1) perpetuating the standard that made us feel bad in the first place" GAH!!! This is why I no longer get Botox - mostly due to being a subscriber here. I don't want to perpetuate the standard anymore! (btw, my photo here is at least a decade old) time to change it.
Okay, so, how do I focus more on becoming horny than on becoming beautiful?
The fallacy lies in thinking that with neurotoxins, like Botox, it's has to be all or nothing. Yes, some women choose a "frozen" look. But many women choose a natural look, which allows them to still express but relax the wrinkles enough so that they don't form deep lines and wrinkles.
I have not stopped thinking about this since reading it and I keep coming back. Uuuuuuuf - so so so much meat here.