- The Observer, Sunday December 17 2000
Do you suffer the anguish of embarrassing vertical brow WRINKLES? Are your crow's feet growing feet of their own? Does your forehead crumple into UNSIGHTLY corrugated cardboard at the slightest hint of an arched eyebrow? Now you can banish those telltale signs of being your proper AGE with new improved Botox - the easy, modern way to look younger, live longer, sleep with more attractive members of the opposite SEX and improve your chances of being good at poker! All you have to do is have your head injected with deadly snake POISON every few months and...
Hang on a minute - snake poison ?
Well OK, it's not real snake poison, but it more or less does the same thing in so far as it paralyses your muscles above the eyebrows so you can't scowl any more, or embark on inadvisable shall we? games with Gail from accounts at the office party, or attract a waiter's attention without standing on a chair. Its real name is botulinum toxin and the treatment has apparently proved very popular among New York psychoanalysts who want to avoid looking surprised when their clients start telling them about their double life as serial killers. Women are having it done in their lunch breaks instead of buying birthday cards and having their holiday photos developed. Men, too, are succumbing to the lure of a youthful, relaxed, upper-facial area. Have you noticed how inscrutable Cliff Richard is looking these days? Yes. Pop's perennial prince of pap recently came out as a 'user', explaining that not even he - now pushing an astonishing 105 - can indefinitely continue to pass for a 31-year-old without calling in the builders occasionally.
And, of course, no one need ever know. It's not as if you're going to get people coming up to you at the bus stop and asking if you'd mind raising your eyebrows for a moment. It's not as glaringly obvious as dyeing your hair or suddenly to be seen bulging out of your trousers with spiffing new testicular implants. All the same, it does seem like the thin end of the wedge for a proper man in his forties to be seen dallying with cosmetic enhancements I can't help thinking, as I sit in an exclusive Harley Street clinic waiting for my initial consultation. I've been reading The Adonis Complex (Simon & Schuster £17.99), written by a trio of American psychiatrists who think that men are becoming pathologically obsessed with their looks and their weight, and, as a result, are locked into ruinous dietary and exercise regimes, leading to a cycle of compulsive cheeseburger eating, negative body-image disorders and general self-hatred. It seems men the Western world over are increasingly to be found in the bathroom removing white pubic hairs, experimenting with penile enlargement pumps and combing over their bald patches (before resorting to something called hair plugs, which I must find out more about).
It is a subject that divides the nation, or at least people I bump into. Most are happy to concede that it's preferable to genital-piercing, which has somehow managed to get in under the wire of social acceptability as a bona fide expression of personal creativity. But my 10-year-old boy is fearful that the toxin might turn me into the Elephant Man. And a woman of my acquaintance is horrified when I tell her that I am having my forehead lines finessed out, even on a temporary basis - 'It's so vain ,' she shrieks.
Ah, I agree, it would be vain, I hasten to explain, were I not merely participating in the spirit of journalistic inquiry, thereby placing myself above such personal considerations. And if I end up looking 10 years younger as a result, that's a risk you have to take in my line of work. I realise it's not exactly war reporting but...
'But if you can't move your eyebrows, how can people tell how you're feeling?' she asks.
The thing is, if your forehead looks as if a tractor has just driven over it (as mine does, by coincidence), everybody over-reads how you're feeling anyway. 'Why so glum?' they might ask as you walk into the office having just scooped £185,000 on the Lottery; or 'you seem a bit tense', when all you're doing is standing at the tea trolley weighing up the respective merits of Snickers and Mars Bars.
'But where do you draw the line?' asks my woman acquaintance.
'Weightlifting,' I say.
The consultant, a senior nurse called Ian, is quite amazed by my powerful forehead muscle. 'Very expressive,' he says, taking a step back. Apparently, not everyone's forehead is crying out for a good ironing but mine is. We drink coffee. We chat about my past medical history and he asks if I'm breastfeeding or on medication. He says the treatment takes between four and 10 days to work. He says to take care not to rub the affected area, because this can spread the toxin and result in eyebrow droop, though this is very rare and in any case wears off after only a couple of weeks of your boss wondering why you are asleep at your desk. So, I ask, whether the only real snag is that after three months you turn back into Sid James? 'What? Dead? I hope not.'
We both laugh, me slightly less because, of course, I'm the one having needles stuck in my head. But seriously, he says, eventually you probably need three or four treatments in the first year, two or three in the second, one in the third and after that your eyebrows have forgotten their lines, so to speak. It does cost £250 a time, though, which could mean not buying clothes and shoes for the children for a while, but, hey, everyone has to make sacrifices.
He sends me into the surgery to see Dr Viall, which strikes me as such an excellent name for a poisoner that he immediately gains my confidence. He is a Frenchman. He nods suavely. He can see straightaway that he has a big job on his hands. He asks me to lie on the couch while he fills his syringe. His movements are fastidious. He makes soothing noises and tells me it might hurt a leetle before getting down to work, though to be honest it's no worse than being jabbed with a needle 14 times. He says I might need two or three extra injections in a couple of weeks just to tidy up a bit.
Five or six days go by and there's practically no change. But then a kind of circular smooth area appears in the middle of my topmost furrows. People start to notice. My wife observes that I am receding more than usual. I am smiled at by a woman selling fruit at the station who mistakes me for someone with a sunny disposition. Someone I haven't seen for a while says I am looking well. 'Thanks Mum,' I say.
But I can still move that muscle. I go back for my tidying-up jabs. I am beginning to worry that I may be the owner of The Eyebrows They Could Not Tame.
'Hmm,' says Dr Viall, 'this should do the trick...'
A few days later, I am very nearly a new man. I look at myself this way and that in the mirror. I compare my brow-print now to the one I left on the bedroom window two weeks ago. I await compliments, lucrative modelling contracts, offers of sexual intercourse within a stable, loving relationship. The trouble is, up until now, I have regarded this project as a one-off exploration of the fringes of personal vanity. But what if I'm hooked? What happens when my three months are up and I can't face contemplating the man I once was? How long before I'm out mugging and robbing building societies to feed my habit? And, worse, what if Botox is the soft drug of cosmetic surgery and I move on to Class A full-stretch facials, transforming myself overnight from Sid James to Kirk Douglas? It doesn't bear thinking about.
On the other hand, I suppose a minor nose job wouldn't hurt. And I wonder if they could do something about my legs...
Phil Hogan had his lines done courtesy of the Harley Medical Group (freephone 0800 917 9000). Initial consultation and treatment costs £350; further treatments £250
