Slate's Bizbox
culturebox: Arts, entertainment, and more.

Worry LinesLucky magazine's tips on shooting up.

By Emily Nussbaum
Posted Tuesday, May 21, 2002, at 1:43 PM ET

When it comes to playing on female fears, Lucky magazine is no villain. Charmingly monomaniacal, Lucky has only shopping on its mind: There are no get-a-man articles, no anti-anorexia essays subtly overflowing with diet tips. The publication is like a vivacious but not especially introspective girlfriend—willing to tell you your pants don't fit but uninterested (for better or worse) in bonding over body image. Perhaps this is in part because Lucky seems to skew a little younger than other women's magazines: Judging from the sometimes unwearably cute clothing featured in its pages, its ideal reader seems old enough to have a hundred extra bucks in her pocket to blow on a pair of shoes, but young enough to feel blissful confidence in her own body.

Which is what makes Lucky's June treatment column—on Botox, the botulism-based wrinkle-injection that freezes facial muscles—so surprising. Of course, there's nothing new about a women's magazine spotlighting cosmetic surgery. But in the past 20 years these articles have morphed as radically as a trophy wife's face, going from cautionary tales to pure uncut service features. Twenty years back, face-lift accounts came with warning tags—It's vain! It's risky! It's expensive! Then there were the long "on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand" years: a thousand rueful personal essays on liposuction that mixed justification with self-doubt.

Botox's presence in a shopping magazine for twentysomethings is an eerie indicator that the treatment is crossing from option to good-grooming requirement. After all, only three years ago the treatment itself was a punchline—now, with FDA approval, it's a face treat. The giveaway phrase isn't in the article itself (a fluffy but straightforward summary of where-to-get-it info), it's the sidebar, which murmurs helpfully: "If you're NOT READY for Botox, try these creams." Ruh-roh.

Lucky's editor, Kim France, has used Botox herself (for migraines), and she defends its placement as a beauty treatment. "I was shocked when our beauty editor talked about Botox as a matter of course," she admits. "It struck me as a whole big scary thing. But then I got used to it: because it's temporary, because it's safe." Featuring Botox, France argues, isn't the same as shilling face-lifts or breast implants—"It's a totally different animal." But she does acknowledge that the treatment might be "one more bar to place for woman" seeking to meet basic standards of attractiveness: In addition to being thin and hairless, youthful hotties must flaunt a forehead taut as a corset. And while France loved the effects, it also made her rather hyper-aware of the landscape of Manhattan faces around her. "You know, suddenly you find yourself looking at foreheads and seeing how many don't move. And you start to realize: This is Botox Nation."

It's hard to critique any beauty trend without coming off like a bluestocking: "Ladies, wipe off that crimson whorepaint!" But while no one reads fashion mags for earnest edification, they are—in a deep and genuine way—women's culture. So, it seems worth raising a red flag when a beauty treatment intended to reverse the signs of aging is recommended to those who have not yet begun to sag. If Botox is pretty much the gateway drug of cosmetic surgery—as Lucky put it, "somewhere between a two week spa vacation and a full face-lift"—Lucky's article is also a kind of crossover point. It symbolizes the moment when a normal, ever-so-slightly creased 30-year-old forehead threatens to become the equivalent of a run in a stocking, something anyone with a sense of style would tuck away.

It's enough to deepen that checkmark right between the eyes.

Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Emily Nussbaum lives in New York; she writes for Slate, the New York Times, and Nerve.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Notes From The Fray Editor:

Queenie compared Botox with other cosmetic enhancements, while Miss Mae gave us a homage to catatonia. There was linguistic help for those who don't know what "Ruh-roh" means. We liked RGS's phrase "ironed irony."


Reader Comments From The Fray:


This whole Botox thing isn't about removing the signs of aging, it's a stab at removing the sins of aging. All of that accumulated worry, guilt, deception, fear, anger, nervous
(di)stress, toxic attitudes and lifestyles--in-fighting, back-biting and nail-biting--that is more than skin-deep and won't be fixed by any cosmetic treatment. It's really an attempt to get rid of the signs of (Post) Modern Anxiety!

--Dr Toad

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


Isn't Lucky magazine like Playboy? I mean, who reads the (stupid) articles? I just look at the pictures.

--Deedee

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


Apparently the latest trend in botox treatments is not just to get it done, you also get champagne and gourmet cheese at the doctor's office. Yep, turning medical treatments into social events. Does this strike anyone else as strange? Doesn't it sort of cause you to lose any shred of respect for those offering this procedure?

--gnu

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


From the earliest times women have used cosmetics and other paraphernalia to appear younger and enhance sexual attractiveness. I'm certain women around the world will continue to do so. The problem with botox is that it is easily detectable, so that once you've noticed the frozen forehead, the message is not "I'm young and attractive" but "I'm worried about my wrinkly forehead." This treatment seems better suited to a photographic situation rather than one in which interaction is required. I think confidence is one of the big factors of attractiveness and once the botox is noticed, it is a cue to insecurity not confidence. It's bad because it doesn't make you look younger, it makes you look like you wish you were younger.

--Retief

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

(5/22)

Washington Post