‘Influencers to bankers’: Every type of young professional sneaking into the botox clinic

Rich older white ladies with bundles of cash to spare are the stereotype we’ve long associated with botox injections and other tweakments: The Real Housewives cast or Jennifer Coolidge in A Cinderella Story with her frozen forehead and waxy, stiff, skin. The result is unnatural— and looks it.

But, actually, more young people than ever before are getting botox. Injections have increased 28 per cent since 2010 among 20 to 29-year-olds, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recorded in 2022. In 2020, the UK’s Department of Health even estimated that as many as 41,000 Botox procedures were given to people under 18. 

Baby botox (botulinum toxin) injections are the procedure du jour. Costing around £200 per session, baby botox allows young people to avoid wrinkles in the future by numbing your facial muscles, so wrinkles can’t form in the first place. “The only difference to normal botox is the amount,” says aesthetic surgeon, Dr John Skevofilax. “It’s the same locations. You’re blocking the same muscles. But you don’t get a frozen face.

‘A lot of younger guys – bankers and lawyers – get baby botox’

From Kardashians to Love Island contestants, celebrities have become much more candid about the treatments they’ve had done to their faces and bodies. Often, young people are accused of aspiring to replicate these beauty standards by going for injectable cosmetic treatments.

Yet, while Dr John admits young influencers and models are among his regular customers (“right before their holidays they’ll come in and have something done just to look fresh”), young professionals, like bankers and lawyers, working in the City actually make up the majority of his client base.

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“Baby botox is actually a lot more common than you’d think,” he reveals. “I see a lot of younger guys. If it was to be broken down, I’d say influencers and young professionals are the two core groups.”

From long lunches with clients, to high profile meetings, both banking and law are incredibly client-facing roles, where image seems still to matter. “Young professionals want to look fresh,” Dr John adds. “Bankers, lawyers, it’s quite surprising to a lot of people that they’re all like city workers. It’s that high paced lifestyle. It’s not that they’re starting to look older but that they want to prevent looking older at all.”

‘Botox is like salt, you can always put more in but you can never truly take it out’

At 26, I’m worried about my ever-crinkling forehead. Crows feet are beginning to emerge around my eyes. So, when Dr John offers to five me baby botox in the name of this investigation, I practically snatch the needle out of his hands and do it myself.

Immediately after I’m given the procedure, I see minimal difference. The following days, things look smoother but not dramatically so. The effects are so subtle, nobody I know comments on it. The results should last six months. But, like good surgery should, it doesn’t look like I’ve had work done at all. It’s easy to see why ever-increasingly numbers of young people are adding a bit of botox into their standard beauty-boosting routine.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• ‘Women are on the back foot’: Female contestants on the eye-watering cost of going on Love Island

• You can now get botox for your labia, and apparently it really tightens things up down there

• All these Islanders have said they regret the cosmetic surgery they had done for the villa