Next time you’re paying hundreds of dollars for a jab, spare a thought for the message you’re sending

At dinner recently with a group of women friends all aged around the mid-50s, the conversation turned to ageing. How far would you go to feel comfortable with your appearance as the clock ticks? Where is your personal line in the sand?

The pressure on women that can blight your life so much in your 20s and younger, comes back with a vengeance around the 50 mark. There’s a tonne of money being made out of telling women how to look good over 50, but the gist of it is aim for Jennifer Aniston, not Miss Marple.

Writer Clare Kermond.

Most of my dinner friends were comfortable with hair dye, make up, nice clothes. All had fitness and health routines, but none had gone down the fillers or Botox path.

All of us knew women who regularly got Botox jabs, many younger than us, some with high-profile roles. One talked about colleagues in their mid-20s who were having “preventative” Botox, at about $300 a pop, every 10 to 12 weeks.

We commiserated at the pressure to deny the signs of ageing and agreed that the kind of “does she, doesn’t she” scrutiny that so many women are subjected to was unkind and unfair.

One especially kind and thoughtful friend concluded that while she wouldn’t have Botox, she wouldn’t judge others who chose to. Women get enough judgment, right?

The double standards are blatant and ridiculous. Clothes, hair, weight, wrinkles, all fair game for women, not so much for men.

Grey hair and smile lines on men are wise and distinguished, even cool. George Clooney is a silver fox, right? While there are a handful of women in the public eye who make the same choice, they are cast as bold trailblazers. When Pamela Anderson recently began appearing in public with minimal make-up, she caused a global media frenzy.

This is not to say men don’t feel pressure around body image and ageing. In recent years, the number of men getting Botox has jumped, and horrifyingly, so too have the rates of boys and men experiencing eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

I take a slightly different view to my kindly friend. I don’t judge the individual who chooses Botox, but I think as a community we can judge the practice. Is the justification, “I can afford it, it’s not hurting anyone” really true?

If all the 50-plus women around you are having Botox, doesn’t this perpetuate a false image of ageing, an unrealistic bar the rest of us feel pressured to jump over? If so many women in senior, public-facing roles are getting Botox and fillers, the message to younger women is clear: this is what it takes to succeed; it’s just part of the price you must pay.

At hundreds of dollars a session, Botox is making the beauty industry squillionaires richer and adding to the financial divide around appearance. It’s a safe bet that there’s more Botox in Brighton than Broadmeadows.

I never want to shame a woman for her choices, but this is not a victimless crime. Yet again, the so-called beauty industry is thriving on making those of us who don’t buy what they’re selling feel that somehow we’re inferior or just not trying hard enough.

There is a deceit and manipulation around Botox that needs to be called out. The sales pitch for fillers and Botox is based on the notion that if it’s done well, no one will know you’ve had it. It’s much like advertising for the over-50s that uses images of 20-year-olds or online influencers who tell us their perfect bodies and skin are the result of “clean living” and exercise, or the herbal elixir they happen to be selling, when in fact, it’s filters and Photoshop.

I don’t love everything about ageing, but it has its good points. I want to thrive in this stage, wrinkles and all, not to feel burdened with pressures to live up to the beauty industry’s fakery.

Next time you’re paying hundreds of dollars for a jab to look effortlessly young, spare a thought for the message you’re sending to women of all ages and the part you’re playing in adding to the pressure of deceitful ideas of how the body ages.

Clare Kermond is a Melbourne journalist and editor, current studying for a PhD at Latrobe University in the School of Psychology and Public Health.

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