Can women afford to not botox?

0:00Emma: In today's episode, we are answering a very provocative question. You've got to be with us here. Can women afford to not Botox? Vogue dubbed 2025 the year of plastic surgery transparency. And as more celebrities and people in the public eye have been open about the procedures they've got, it has made the conversation around surgery feel increasingly normalized, even aspirational. So, of course, we wanted to do a deep dive on how much women are spending on their appearances, as well as the personal and professional pressures and the actual cost associated. If you, like us, have been haunted by the question to Botox or not Botox and then felt guilty about whether that makes you a bad feminist, this conversation will resonate so hard.

0:46Emma: This is The Curve Weekly where we read the finance news so that you don't have to. I'm Sophie Hallwright, ex-producer of television, radio, and I was a bit of a financial mess so we started this podcast so that me and lots of others can understand the economy and investing. And my name is Emma-Louise Boynton. I am a writer, author and broadcaster. And I'm standing in for Vic, who is building the Curve Investments newly announced. So I'll be filling in for her to discuss today's most pressing financial news. But before we dive in, we've got a word from today's sponsor. If KiwiSaver has been on your, I should probably sort that out list for years, this is your sign.

1:26Emma: Book a no-cost KiwiSaver advice session with a Generate advisor by using the link in our show notes. And thank you so much to Generate for sponsoring this episode of The Curve Weekly. Coming in for this recording, I was weirdly nervous. I don't know why, but this particular conversation we're about to have today is one that I have put off researching in depth and talking about. And Vic and I have spoken at length about how we should speak about this, and we just haven't? I mean, I totally get that because I think it feels so, I mean, it's so personal because it's something that as soon as you're 30, I'm sure 20 year olds too, it's so top of mind.

2:06I feel like I said this to you recently, I think, in your 30s, there are two existential questions which seem to just hang over you daily, whether to be a mother and to Botox or not to Botox. These are the two questions that I feel like I cannot move without confronting whether that's because of the litany of baby announcements that i continually get on my social media feeds and my whatsapps and then botox i feel like you know you're always trying when you're reading stuff online and you're always trying to work out whether it's written by chat gbt and it's always quite obvious but then there's like no that because you're a journalist i don't think lots of people are doing oh i'm definitely i don't know a lot of my friends who like really are not a lot of authors true i'm friends with a lot of writers i'm in a total bubble okay so we're always like i just think you can so easily tell when stuff is written by chat gpt there's like so many giveaways but i feel like i'm kind of everything i'm reading now i'm reading through a lens of like was this written like by ai or by a human in the same way what i'm looking at people's faces now i'm looking being like have you botox or have you not botox because it's like

3:08Emma: little like small giveaways but this is also coming from someone that hasn't botox so we're to get to that in a second. Well, I think... I haven't... Wait, pause. We have to pause this conversation because before we get into this, we have to talk about are you in the red or are you in the green this week? Have you had a good financial week or a bad financial week? Listen, this is my second episode on the curve. I haven't been ingratiated into the world of financial education yet. I'm at the beginning of my journey. So I feel like this is a humiliation ritual, which is going to be the whole point.

3:43of doing more work with the curve is to educate myself around finances. So every time you ask me this, I'm going to give you the same answer. And it feels like this kind of self-fragilation. Guess what? So I'm in the red. I just got back from holiday. How was it? It was amazing. And I just indulged and had the best time with my partner. And it was just the most like healing thing, especially post book. I left feeling a bit like, kind of just grouchy and just overwhelmed by book promo whatever and i come back feeling so revived however in order to get that feeling of nourishment and relaxation it meant be a little bit like you know not worrying about money so i've come back in the red

4:27Emma: we actually have an episode coming out on the holiday hangover the financial holiday hangover in a few weeks time because it's so real it me you come back like it's shot and i hate when you I know this is a good financial thing, but when Monzo's like, you spent X, X, and I'm like, didn't want to know. Yeah. I had my head in the sand. Don't give me an overview. Don't. Yeah, no. I'm just waiting for the car. You know, you, you, this is so dumb, but when you rent a car, you put, you have your down payment and then you pay for the actual car. It was like 500 pounds is coming back into my account that was like the deposit.

4:58And I'm just kind of waiting that being like, that's going to be great because that's going to put you back in.

5:02Emma: it's like a if you move house and you put your deposit down for rent and you've done a month it's like free money oh you're like perfect god i'm so good at this girl math um so are you in the green or the red i i'm really unsure why but i'm massively in the red i've got i looked at you just before this morning before we recorded i've got 41 pounds in my fun account to last me until the 15th so I basically I'm halfway through the month and I have spent way more and I haven't even had a fun month how did I not have a blower I didn't buy any cool clothes I'm like I'm I'm a bit annoyed all I'm thinking is at least you have a fun account yeah um so today the title that I almost feel uncomfortable saying out loud can women afford to not Botox and before anyone stops listening and thinks this is the most anti-feminist podcast you've ever heard, bear with us because there's been a lot of research that's gone into this.

6:04Emma: Because I didn't want to just get on the microphone and just talk about the emotional side of Botox. I really wanted to look at the financial side and get lots of different opinions and research to feed into this. Oh my God, I feel nervous. I can feel it. I'm like, it's so weird. Is it because it just feels really personal to you? I think it's personal. I feel embarrassed by this conversation. Why do you feel embarrassed? We'll get to that. I'll share it. But I do feel, I feel as though I have the side of myself and my personality and the way that I show up in the world that I really try to not lean into.

6:39Emma: Some parts of what I would say has been like beauty standards set by, you know, it feels to me like we're in the Barbie movie and it's the boardroom of white men telling us how we should look. and I try so hard in lots of areas of my life to give the middle finger to some things. When it comes to beauty standards, I find it so hard. So I think with this particular conversation, I feel so conflicted with the decisions I've made versus what I wish I had the courage or like ability to push back on. Interesting. I hear that entirely. And I do think, you know, you even just mentioned that about the feminist piece.

7:18It can feel so confronting to one's feminism. can I be a good feminist and still participate in a beauty industrial complex that is run and by men and from which men profit and which is still kind of really oriented around the male gaze and obviously we'll go into that in more depth later but I think it is something I also thought about in terms of I don't have that same level I I just love talking about anything that's like a bit uncomfortable and taboo so I'm like let's go but I do have that on a personal level it's something I have grappled with personally like can I be the feminist I want to be whilst also obsessing over changing my appearance and wanting to kind of you know keep up with trends around appearance like how do I grapple with that I mean it's you know forever being a guilty feminist well we're going to go back a second so let me frame this in 2019 uh writer and author Gia Tolentino who writes The New Yorker she wrote a piece entitled The Age of Instagram Face it was a term that actually originated by beauty writer jessica de fino who does some great work in this area she writes a lot about beauty trends and it's kind of like the go-to voice in this space uh now tolantino's article went viral arguing that social media facetune and plastic surgery had created a single cyborgian look it is one that i always associated with that kind of kardashian ideal you know it just became shy yeah big lips kind of big butt kind of totally that that kind of upward moving face, which defy gravity.

8:43It's the high eyebrows. It's the cat-like eyes. Everything goes this way when, for me, things are going this way. That's up versus down for anyone who's just listening to some audio. Yes, it's like everything is pulling up to the sides. Yes, it is defying gravity in every which way.

8:58Emma: And also on this, there is so many filters that do this to your face. Oh, my God. I know. Sometimes it's like, wow. I know. It's stunning when I look like a cat. But that's what I ate too because I'm like, oh, wow. looking good I'm like no no no I know and also bear I mean she wrote this piece in 2019 this was before the pandemic this is before we were all basically forced to stay in our homes and exist solely online where filters became even more ubiquitous than they were then anyway so this article went viral in 2019 and it really kind of spoke to the impact that social media was having on how we saw ourselves and beauty standards fast forward to 2026 and this has aesthetic homogeneity has only intensified as we know um and cue another tollantino viral article for the new yorker which just came out i believe it was last week titled our plastic surgery nightmare now i want to read just a quick section of the beginning of the piece because i think it really encapsulates everything the article goes on to discuss and for me was just chilling to read so she writes today the young inject their faces and look old the old inject their faces and look uncanny.

10:08A 20-year-old got famous for hitting himself in the jaw with a hammer to become hotter. Teenagers ask strangers on the internet if a facelift is their only hope. The internet casually scrambles basic ideals of personhood, reframing people as commodities and stripping us for parts. But only recently has this process been encoded so specifically onto the face, traditionally thought of as a portal to our humanity. The face is separating from the person and the person is separating from the soul. And this is happening in front of us, on our phones, in the most banal fashion every day. Sophie, what did you make of this piece?

10:45Emma: So many things. I don't really know where to go with this. What it made me think was I went and basically did a huge deep dive. One of the sections that gave me like full-on goosebumps and feel quite sick, I actually wanted to read a tiny sentence that came out. She said, a writer for New York Magazine observed a deep, plain facelift. Do you know what that is? Oh, obviously, because I've looked up and getting one. Moments of deep insecurity that my face hasn't defied gravity. Yes. It's deep, and it's a facelift, and it makes it go up. Basically. It was described the surgeon's fingers sliding under the patient's cheek once all the necessary ligaments have been cut.

11:29Emma: But the features on top move freely and in one piece like a Halloween mask. And I was just like, that is disgusting and so invasive. Dystopian. Yeah, I think the reason I felt confused or like unsure how to respond to this article was that on the one hand, I think that I have almost demonized that type of plastic surgery in a way that is so different from getting microneedling or Botox or lip filler because those are the more normalized price accessible procedures. What is the difference? Like obviously it's way more invasive to get rhinoplasty, you know, to get a nose job. You know, I understand that.

12:11Emma: But actually, in my head, I think I've really justified a lot of the things that are so much more quote unquote common now. I mean, the quote that you read out was just gave me literal goosebumps. The idea of just a surgeon moving someone's face in such a visceral kind of grotesque way. I think what I felt reading it and generally kind of all the research we did for this discussion today, I'm struck by one, just the normalization where this stuff has no longer become a kind of pocket of conversation on the Internet. it feels so ubiquitous I mean I just everyone you know we live in a big city London um hyper exposed to glossy media online on social media etc so I appreciate there's a kind of specific bubble in which we both exist but I do just feel it's been so normal when you talk about tweakments and and kind of what's the difference between that and this more kind of extreme invasive surgeries I I see those as kind of the gateway drug you know because you begin to see every imperfection you dislike about yourself as eminently fixable the gateway drug is is an interesting way to put it because if I think about I don't know if I think about where I started in terms of buying makeup at 14 to all the different layers of beauty that I have done that I tell myself is for my own confidence and for me and not for other people is total bullshit and I think unless someone is sitting there having not got their nails done, not buying makeup, not like really behaving in a world like men do in terms of their appearance, it's kind of unfair to throw judgment on people who are making other decisions about where they spend their money, whether it's getting their eyelashes curled, whether it's getting Botox, whether it's getting lip filler.

14:01Emma: And I know that maybe those seem quite far apart, but they're actually also coming from the exact same place, which is, yeah, the way you look needs to be constantly improved what I'm like dying to share with you later through this episode is how much money on average women are spending in their 20s 30s 40s up to 70s it is disgusting and also I did the numbers on how much it would be if we'd invested it and it is shocking and it's really interesting because one of the conversations that I've started having with my boyfriend around this because we've been talking about things like, you know, he will pay for more dinners or for more things than I do.

14:43Emma: He said to me once, and it really stuck with me because I see all these people online saying, like, yeah, you think you should split evenly? What about all this? And it's all these women, like, pulling out of their, like, beauty products and blah, blah, blah. He was like, yeah, you spend so much more on that stuff than I do. So, like, where does that net out? And, like, kind of makes sense for me to pay more if you're paying more on that. And I was like, thank you. What a modern man. I thought I loved that. It made me feel really good because I was like, yeah, thank you for recognizing the fact that I do feel the pressure to spend that.

15:13Emma: And him sort of saying, you know, like, we benefit from you spending that because we, there is this like inherent thing of how we think our partner or how women should look on the world. And I know you have to spend that much. Like, he knows that. I think where my mind goes with that is a sort of grief as to how much time women are encouraged and pressured to spend obsessing over the way that we look. And, you know, even when you said before, like the conversations you've had around with your partner around the amount of time that you spend and the money that you've had, that you've had, quote unquote, because.

15:53Emma: No, no, totally. You know what I mean? and we've had to spend on your um appearance and on makeup and all that sort of stuff I love that he's acknowledging that and you know saying he'll pay more but I just go back to thinking kind of how much of our brain space as women has been co-opted by the beauty industrial complex there's a brilliant book called the beauty myth um by Naomi Wolf which was written in the early 90s which talked about exactly this how as women moved from the domestic setting so typically being kind of at home as housewives as women gained more economic social and political power in the latter half the 20th century that's when the beauty industry really took off and she basically argues that the pressure that was then placed on women to be obsessed with beauty there was a rise in cosmetic surgery there was a rise you know the beauty industry just grew massively it was a purposeful like movement to distract women away from these new more kind of public pursuits that were gaining us kind of economic social political power it was a way of turning us back in and on ourselves look at the workplace now look at how incredible women are the fact that no one needs to be in a heteronormative relationship with a man paying for anything, or we can have babies on our own, we can earn our own money.

17:18Emma: There is this huge fear, I think. We're starting to realize how amazing we are and how much we can do. And it's funny, I was even at a dinner party, there was a whole lot of different ages at it. And this guy who was probably around 68, 70, was saying, you know, and here's one daughter, and he was like, oh, I mean, we all know that, you know, women of elite sex, you know, and honestly, what is going to happen if guys don't start stepping up, you know, stepping up because, yeah, and so that distraction piece is like, we're starting to realize it. So skinny top making a comeback, all of this, like we're going back to, you know, almost like elevating people that look like walking coat hangers.

17:59Emma: And we're trying to reverse that and turn everyone's attention back on appearance. When we'd come so far in monetizing our assets outside of our appearance. Totally. There's a patriarchal impulse. Like, diminish women's power in whatever way possible. And I think by making us turn in on ourselves, I can't imagine any more insidious way in which it kind of dims our light. I think that we should, for the sake of transparency in this conversation, admit to what we both have, whilst being able to acknowledge the like feminist arguments against it all, the patriarchal impetus that underlies like the pressure the women are faced around beauty, we should own up to what we've had.

18:43Emma: No, I mean, I know that we need to. This is why I was nervous about this conversation because, and I will, I will, but I don't want by talking about it and I'm in this weird in between of thinking, is transparency helping us or is it actually making it worse? Because on the one hand, having someone who objectively looks like 20 years younger than their biological age and not saying they've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that or gone under the knife or whatever is really unhelpful because we're of course comparing ourselves to that and it's so gaslighting yeah just kind of wait sorry you actually look like that it's just it makes you feel a bit mad on the other hand talking about this also makes it so much more normalized and then people see or hear someone saying they've done it and think that they should too.

19:32Emma: And it's this kind of copycat effect that I was guilty of and I totally fell into as well. So I feel like the reason I've avoided talking about this is the last thing I would want is someone to hear me saying something I've done and then thinking that's what they should be doing too, because I'm actually really embarrassed about how much money I've spent on things that is totally coming from insecurity and fear of becoming irrelevant or fear of this or, you know, it's really, it's actually so sad. And I, so that is why I've like not talked about it. Okay. So I have spent, I would say, probably over my time because I'm so terrible with consistency booking laser appointments.

20:07Emma: Like, holy shit. You know, they're like, do it 10 times and you will have no hair on your legs. And I'm like, cool. But then I forget and book it every six months. And then it's like, I'm like, it's not working. And they're like, yeah, you're inconsistent. So, but I would say I've probably spent around 3000 on laser over the last 10 years of my life can i ask where yeah sure is it just pubes is it is it leg pube oh like i want to know i've done everything i've done legs that's the very hairy still so just so everyone knows there's still hair everywhere so this has been an unsuccessful investment i would say if what i was going for was no hair so i still had hair in all of these places um i've done legs i've done full brazilian i've done underarm i've done are we gonna go there i've done areola i've done you know like i've around my boobs well i just pluck them i'm just old school i've done i mean i know it's so fun to pluck i'm sorry i know it's a bad mission but oh my god plucking my nipple hair is when people try and say they don't have it i'm like this is so annoying everyone shaved them once as a teenager and then you could never go normal and if you don't amazing happy for you but like let's just you know move right along I've done like chin and like um mustache I've done I'm pretty sure I've done my big toe at some point oh yeah quite long hair there um essential again but again like all these places still have hair because I haven't done it properly as in properly as in whatever like um and then I have had micro needling but I haven't done it since I was probably 20 I mean I think I did it when I was like 27 28 and it was pre-botox it was the most painful thing ever.

21:53Emma: I just had tears streaming down my face. I hated it. It was so painful and so expensive. And then I've spent probably, in total I was trying to look up, I've probably spent around$8 ,000 on Botox. Mic drop moments? Yeah. $8 ,000? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I've written a sub stack on this in more detail so if anyone does want to read it, I've like, I had this moment on the plane, I can't remember where I was going and I just felt so sorry for myself and so embarrassed about the whole thing and I just had it and I got a bruise and I was like this is so sad this is so fucking sad and I was like I hate that I'm doing this I think I was 28 yeah how over what period you spent about 28 so 28 29 33 1 2 3 about 8 7 years okay so yeah what about you what if you had spent money on well I don't know if I know all of your things I yeah I couldn't remember either um so we're in that together I actually haven't had a ton I am literally about to book Botox so I should probably just make that I should just put my hands up and say this guilty feminist is about to book to get Botox can I ask was it from watching yourself on this podcast and seeing how much your face I think I'm just being visible like so much of my work is visible whether it's like doing live events and they're recorded so many photographs in the past year, particularly around the book.

23:16I'm just like seeing my face the whole time.

23:18Emma: Well, it's interesting you say that and we can get some of this research, but the rise of Botox between 2020 and 2022 is the largest that it's ever seen in a short space of time. And that's where most of us, pandemic, home, on Zoom for five hours a day. And I think that that is really unhelpful. We look at ourselves far too much. Far too much. So that, interestingly, is literally when I started getting stuff done. So it was after the pandemic. and by the way during the pandemic I went down research holes of getting a nose job of getting various other things because I was so confronted by constantly looking at my face as we all were over hours over days whatever so that's when I really began to feel like just too confronted by how I looked and wanted to change things so I booked in consultations for a nose job I began researching what other things I could get ended up getting as you did get Botox then I got this this facial with this woman, Dr.

24:13Awoma, which is like the Kardashian facial where they basically just put like little bits of Botox over your whole face, like only on skin level. So it's not like getting Botox, but it was an amazing facial. But then I went back to her, I think, for like a small treatment. And my friend was getting Botox after me. And she was just like, do you want to get Botox too? And I was like, sure. So I ended up getting like half a face of botox oh wow all of my four i mean i'm you know i go extreme i didn't realize so i got a foot but this was like about four years ago this was in 2021 yeah five years ago so it's like forehead thing but i didn't like it because it froze my eyes so much that my smile kind of ended halfway my face which didn't work so well i then got my lips done and this was my more this is where i put a bit more i've had my lips done three times and the first time i had them done i had one milliliter put in that's quite a lot right i looked insane and he also put it in oh my god and that's i got filler under my eye that's it i got filler under my eye as well after that botox in the pandemic this is all post-pandemic this is really precipitated by the pandemic got filler under my eye where i do actually naturally just it's quite hollow the filler looked fine it does migrate wouldn't do filler again because i can see it sometimes near my eye that's scary sorry I got it twice.

25:30No, definitely. I can just see it. But I went back to that same guy and got my lips done. And you should never use the same person for different things because people have a specialism. And that's what they're good at. He put this lip filler in like in large globs. So I just had like all these lumps in my lips. Like they kept their outer shape, but the inside was just so lumpy. So that was my first approach to get my lips done. But I did like it generally. And then I've got it done twice since, but with a smaller amount. and haven't had anything done in the past like two two and a half years but now begin my botox journey and i'd say a couple i'm obviously speaking in pounds i've spent a couple thousand on that yeah i would say and we haven't done botox i haven't done laser that's also on my list it is really an admin issue yeah it is purely an admin issue yeah i can so relate the idea of being at

26:17Emma: getting myself looking once shaving before it not having it been in the sun i'm like i just have got to the point where I'm lying to them they're like have you been in the sun have you got fake tan I'm like no and she's looking at me like you're lying I'm like honestly I'm not coming back here so do it and if you give me something that's my own fault like I just cannot deal what do you think about talking about it do you feel as though we're now because even just when you said and I'm just being honest like one of the things that you said where you were like don't go to someone that's that's like you know good at one thing and not the other I'm like oh don't say it because i don't want to be like promoting it and it's so i just feel so confused but also that is a good tip though no it is and if you're and if people listening are probably getting stuff done i don't make my mistake yeah i totally hear you on feeling uncomfortable because i also feel uncomfortable with that and i do think there is i mean vogue declared 2025 the year of transparency when it comes to plastic surgery and it was a time when suddenly you saw this very notable shift where historically celebrities have been a bit kind of coy and and you know about revealing anything they'd have done, continued denied stuff.

27:22And then they suddenly began to be more open. Kylie Jenner very famously responded to someone on TikTok giving the exact cup size and kind of procedure she'd had with regards to her boob job. Wait, who did this? Kylie Jenner. Kylie, I thought you said Kendall because I was like, I'm sure Kendall says she's really good. No, Kendall is gaslighting all of us by saying she's had baby Botox and that's it.

27:41Emma: Just absolutely jog on. There's no way. Okay, well this is a good comparison. So you've got Kylie Jenner who is telling us all exactly what she's had done uh kind of the size of the implant she had who the surgeon was etc and she was big kind of touted online as being this like girl's girl feminist like she's kind of she's being honest she's letting us in she's also giving the gals the good tips by comparison kendall jenner has said that she's only had baby botox which is amazing given that her face looks completely different to what it looked like when she was younger i feel gaslit by kendall jenner and I also look at her being like it for me that is so distorting of beauty standards because I'm looking at her very perfect face thinking god like that's such a vision of beauty and I then feel bad about myself but I don't look like that and I should have like that smoother skin that more symmetrical nose it is such like you I you know I don't know what libels like this but like she's visibly had lots of work done yeah so i think that gaslighting also creates a problem with regards to our beauty standards and how we see ourselves versus others and the intensity of the comparison that we can make with people on the flip side i also agree i don't know that whether i think kylie jenner and anyone else like that being so specific about the work they've had done totally normalizes it and makes it feel even more aspirational it's also while she's built a beauty business around like lip like lip glosses and lip liners like get your lips like mine when her lips are filled with filler so there's I think it is such a confusing space particularly for the people consumer at the end particularly for everyday women that's an unsatisfying response to your question around transparency because I think on the one hand I don't think it does us a favor when they're not when people in public eye particularly aren't transparent and we're being missold products and ideal of the good life we're constantly bombarded with imagery that's so perfected never mind the filters and we're we're led to believe that it's it's there there's been no intervention that we too could should look like that so i think that's problematic but i do think that the talking about it as openly as we now do makes it feel not just normalized but aspirational accessible and that I do think is a problem there's this one OnlyFans creator who I think is just the funniest person ever Ari Kitsaya I'm not gonna say her name properly you know she's got three million followers and she does all these videos around like oh my god you're so naturally beautiful and she's like and then she puts photos up of what she looked like before and she'll be like nose job boob job liposuction had all this and I will say honestly it did make me feel better because I thought, well, I get the choice.

30:31Emma: I don't want to spend time and money in that same way. I don't want to put my body through that extreme plastic surgery or any kind of procedure to look like that. And I really valued that she'd said it and how much she spent because I was like, ah, yeah, I've got the choice and I don't choose that. And so I know that you don't look like that. So that's, yeah, but I still feel confused about it. That for me is a sort of transparency that I think is actually important and valuable. So I'm really curious to know the cost involved in the kind of tweakment cum surgery space. But before the big revelation, I just want to make one final point, which is around the kind of personal cost.

31:11And I think we've this kind of conversation has really oriented a lot around the kind of personal cost thus far. But for me, what really rammed home the sheer violence of what we're talking about today. So early this year, actress Denise Richards did an interview with Allure magazine. It was honestly like, I haven't been able to forget it. It was about, it was detailing the specificities of her recent facelift. And she went in and with Allure, she basically did this full on interview where she detailed every part of her process of deciding to get the facelift, then getting the facelift. she in the article is included imagery of every part of her recovery so and the sophie i cannot the day after facelift she has this picture of her that i cannot erase from my mind it's her all bandaged up i could see it it's all bandaged up eyes all bruised and then she has these two you know the draining cups that you have our surgery on top of her head these things drain oh my god seeing that article for me it's all very well and good me being like oh i'm gonna get face if I don't you know I don't want to aid I want to look young I want to look gorgeous forever seeing the violence that women go through to attain a specific look to try and kind of attain this unattainable eternal youth to me was so confronting because it looked like she'd been in a car crash and I had to remind myself she chose to put her face through a car crash in order are too I mean annoyingly but the before and after pictures she looks really good now she looks amazing she looks like she's a raised 20 years off her face but at what personal cost let's not forget like the trauma of going through something so invasive you know on one's kind of emotional state but also on your body you're putting yourself through kind of hours of surgery that has an impact so I just wanted to and if anyone is curious go and check out that article Allure magazine because I do think it really shows the dark underbelly of what we're really talking about in a very visual way.

33:18Emma: No, because you're right. You can talk about the cost of it. You can talk about the understanding the reasons why, but to book the appointment, to go and then sit on the operating table and to go through that much pain in the process of actually then coming out the other side, you know, all we're seeing is the before and after. You're forgetting in between. And I have to say that. I don't think I could do that purely because I'm terrified of hospitals and needles and like. I have to say the leaky bag things where they have all the like the fluid. That gives me like absolute heebie-jews. But I think when it comes when we just to return to that transparency piece.

33:53I actually think that sort of transparency I was like at least we know the full picture. True. Because that to me was horrifying. And you're right. We see before and after. We see oh a bit of sagging. And then oh my god gorgeous. What we don't see is the absolutely violent kind of grotesque in between and the pain and the cost of that.

34:13Emma: Like you can't even say what that's, you know, it's so easy. I think we're really putting numbers next to it. Like I did so much research around how much people are spending, you know, what countries are they the most popular? What are people spending on the different? But it's so easy to forget about that emotional piece. Okay. That all being said, I want you to now hit me with the numbers. So we've talked about the personal cost. What is this cost financially? How much are people spending to try and look younger? So much money. A survey found more than a quarter of women aged 30 to 44 said that they would spend$10 ,000 to$100 ,000 on the right procedure if they could get access to financing, which I thought was just wild.

34:56Emma: So it's actually for a lot of people, the finance is the blocker, not necessarily the decision to want to get it done. which is just like you need to save up to basically like crush your face but think about what you do with that money you just fucking wait so the most common procedures they are the obvious like breast implants, tummy tucks butt implants, like BBLs so dangerous removing your buccal fat buccal fat removal yeah but I think that's the whole cat like sucking sort of face thing and obviously those are all procedures that guys don't get But the prices have climbed like between 40 and 90 % in five years.

35:36So there's...

35:37Emma: Wait, what? Yeah. That is an extortionate increase. Well, I think the thing is, and it's kind of back to what you were saying around the accessible procedures of things like filler, Botox, that sort of thing. Those prices have kind of remained not super high in regards to like how inflation's moved and the cost of living. but what has got really expensive is like more surgical procedures it's really if you look into the stats around like the how dangerous some things can be like people die from getting butt implants oh bbs are so dangerous what i looked into though is it's not necessarily just because it's dangerous it's because people are going to a cheaper surgeon and it's there that it's really dangerous so yeah anyway and then also things like getting like 3d imagery and like seeing what it's going to look like afterwards like those are what the costs are like being bumped up by because people are wanting more visibility on what it's going to look like after so surgery essentially it's getting more complex and i guess what we're what's available to us is more um kind of premium and there's a more of a kind of broader variety of surgeries and with that the cost is premium essentially a lot of these costs i've looked at as well as like not taking into account the like Like the increase of what you're spending for like anesthesia and all of that is kind of like on top of.

36:59Emma: So I'm just going to read out some of the stats. So this is averages. So of the top procedures right now, 2024 is the most like the latest stats that you can get. Rhinoplasty, which is nose, is between 7 and 12. So like averaging around$10 ,000 US dollars. BDL, like basically like fat grafting is between 7 and 11 ,000. So averaging about$9 ,200, which I would have thought would be way more expensive given how… I think it's so much more expensive. Yes, same. Liposuction average just under$6 ,000. Getting your breast done is around$6 ,000. But I think that also when you're looking at the averages, like there's such a different like in terms of the spectrum of the surgeons that you can pay for.

37:43Emma: You know, a lot of people go to places like Turkey where it's way cheaper. So, I mean, like, I think if you were looking at the really expensive surgeons, these would be, like, five times more. This is just averages. But I basically then looked into, okay, what is the average that people are spending on beauty? And this is so broad, right? Because for some people, they're spending on manicures and on makeup. For some people, they're doing Botox and needling. For some people, they're getting nose jobs. So, like, obviously, this is not – this is an average. It's not just surgery, but it's an average of 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s to 70s.

38:19Emma: What on average are we spending on what we look like as women? So in your 20s, average is around 9 ,300. 30s, the average is the highest. So the most that people are spending on what they look like is in their 30s, which just makes so much sense. You can get away with a lot in your 20s. I mean, I used to go out and like party. I used to stay out until like 4 or 5 a.m. And the next day, fresh. If I just get seven hours sleep rather than eight, I'm like, are you okay? Have you got up a slow? Like, it's so intense. So I can see. I think you just think to catch up with your income, right? So it's like you're earning probably like a lot of women peak in their earning in like early 30s.

39:03Emma: So if you're choosing to have kids or not, like you see all these memes of people being like, you better be loving your swimming lesson because that's my Botox fund, you know? It's just like people are choosing. So then 40s, it goes down to around 6 ,200. 50s is average of just over 4 ,000. 60s and 70s is the lowest, so just over 2 ,000. So it's interesting. We're in the age bracket where the average is highest. I'm curious about the 40s, why it goes down in your 40s. Do you think, just anecdotally, do you think that's because you accept yourself more? Probably. Or you're also just like, give a shit.

39:39I've got bigger fish to throw. I would say probably. Because I think that is still, although it's when your income goes up, you've professionally probably gained a bit more ground. It's still a kind of quite weird period in which, I mean, you're making decisions oftentimes around family, around partnership. Like oftentimes I think sometimes you're so figure, oftentimes, sometimes, two different things. You're often then beginning to think, kind of, what do I want the kind of the bigger piece of my career to look like? I know a lot of people going through big career transitions. it feels to me like it's still a time of transition and thus where you're really questioning who you are and how you want to be in the world and i think your looks are obviously a really big part of that and with the expendable income that comes with potentially not having a family yet by the time one gets to one's 40s i hope there's a bit more of a this is who the fuck i am this is what my priorities are this is what i care about this is what i'm spending my money and time doing we hope it's like you know solving world problems and building big businesses but like do you think

40:36Emma: that is it is it what is that i think also 30s you're kind of in that preventative age bracket which is so bullshit you know you're in the age where it's like okay you can prevent with baby botox or like you know you haven't quite got there's a lot of people that talk about the idea of you know the older you get if you try and then use botox it looks bad whereas they're trying to sell the idea that you can prevent it if you start earlier. So I think it's a combination of things, but just this industry in general, if you look at the broad spectrum of now, the fact that people in their 20s all the way up to their 50s and 60s can use it.

41:14Emma: Think about that in terms of marketing. You're not even just looking at it for like a 10 year period. It's like, oh, you're young, you can prevent it. Oh, you're 30, you can still kind of prevent it. Oh, you're 40, you might look your age, but like you can stop it now. You know, there's so many different, oh you're 60 wind back the clock yeah and I think actually this is a really important point to highlight um and kind of goes back to our own kind of internal grappling with this from a kind of feminist perspective none of us live in a vacuum we are all hyper exposed to a hell of a lot of marketing around beauty and kind of what we should look like but I think it's a really important thing to be reminded of that the pressure that you're feeling to look a certain way to get certain procedures to get certain tweakments to buy certain products is thanks to very very good marketing that a lot of money is being put behind so I'm not saying like you know whatever decision someone makes in terms of how they want to look what they where they want to put their money that is a decision that people make individually but just have in the back of your mind at all times a lot of money is being spent daily to try and get you to spend your money on quote unquote fixing how you look and i think just to remind yourself you're you're fine how you are you're good you're enough and whatever you look like and if you do choose to spend your money in a certain way just remember that the marketing has won in that case like well it's interesting you say that because even as we were researching for this i listened to podcasts i read articles you know there's actually only three percent of adults in the u.s that are using botox I thought it was so much more than that.

42:52Emma: So on the one hand, you might be surrounded by media saying that it's everyone spending. The idea that spending on your looks and looking youthful is going to get you a pay rise and all of this stuff. There's so much propaganda that makes you think there is a reason why you should be doing it and that it's actually an investment in your career and blah, blah, blah. You could also be in a vacuum like I know I am where I know a lot of people are doing things like this, but we are a very small percentage of the overarching adult population. And when you are digesting a huge amount of articles from people that are talking about all of this stuff, you think it's way more common than it is.

43:29Emma: It's not. Do you want to hear the numbers of what we wouldn't actually have if we invested the money that we're spending on beauty? I desperately do. I don't know. I don't know. I actually say that. I do and I don't. But tell me. God, look how professional my spreadsheet is. just so you know. I would like everyone to be very impressed by this. The spreadsheet gives me a bit of anxiety, but we'll like the other thing. I got my boyfriend to help me with it, just so everyone knows. So we have between the ages of 20 and 69, so these are the averages of what we spend on beauty across our life. So if we invested, so in our 20s we spoke about it's around 9 ,300, in your 30s it goes up to 9 ,700, et cetera.

44:13Emma: So if every year this money was being invested,

44:18Emma: you'd be rich so you would have invested over your life 317 000 yeah and that thinking about cumulative compound interest honestly gives me sweaty hands like saying this so this is this is also the best example of how you actually can invest not that much like 300 000 is a shitload to invest. But guess how much that would be if it had been invested and compounded over that time. Just have a guess. Over what period of time? How many years? So this is from being 20 to 69. Okay. So for 50 years, how much that cost? I have no idea. I mean, what? I don't want to reveal my ignorance. So just tell me.

45:01Emma: $4 ,800 ,000 and$21 ,000. Oh, my. I'd be a millionaire. You would have nearly$5 million. if we invested the money we spend on our face and what we look like. And when I was... And wait, so can I just ask you to write it down for me? Is that on beauty products and treatments? So this is the average that people are spending on beauty each decade of their life. So it's, you know, for me, so I then broke it down for myself. So I spend, on average, around£300 on beauty products, shampoo, hair dye. Oh, wait, per month? Per month. Oh, sorry. Not conservative at all. Not conservative at all. It's so much money.

45:41So if I invested that amount, I actually did it from like if I started now, because obviously

45:50Emma: I haven't done that, I don't know, nearly 35. But if I started now investing that money, so yearly, it's about 3 ,744. That's my, you know, like beauty spend every year. So if I invested this from now, so from 35 until I was 69, I would have invested$126 ,000. So it's like half really. But guess how much less it is in my investments? And this is compound interest. This is the example of how like if you start early, it's so important. It's only$519 ,000 compared to nearly$5 million. The earlier that you invest and the more you invest, obviously, the more that that compounds. but I mean it's it's still a shitload of money what I will say is that there is actually my that is in pounds and then the one before was in USD but whatever the point still stands it's basically like if we invested that amount we would all have a shitload more money yeah than if we were spending on what we look like and what I would say the counter to all of the media that you see around because we're going to get to this in a second there's a really fascinating article and story that's come out at the moment around how so many women in their 40s and 50s are disadvantaged by what they look like from an age perspective and it's so sad but there is also so we're told so much that you know there's the pretty privilege and if you look a certain way and you know pretty people are more confident so they get more pay rises and all of this that does not outweigh so if you think about how much money you're spending on what you look like compared to how much more you may be earning from a percentage even if it's 10 % more which is what some studies say that is nothing on if you actually invested that money elsewhere totally totally and I was thinking imagine if we asked men if you could choose and this is obviously very heteronormative but if you were talking to straight men and you would say to them how would you feel about your partner not spending money on their hair makeup any of the stuff that she does to look the way that she does and she had five million invested what would you think is more valuable like would you see value in her spending on beauty versus not.

47:54Emma: And I honestly think, so fucked up to say that, I think a lot of guys would say, I'd rather make the money in her look a certain way. Oh. Yeah. I did not think you were saying that. I honestly think, I think that if people are doing it anonymously, I think that men don't admit how much they like and appreciate, they don't realize how much is, like, my eyebrows are 45 pounds. My, you know, it's, it's, and it's because all of us buy into it that they don't have the comparison of someone that doesn't spend on beauty. And for as long as the majority or not even majority, for as long as enough people buy into it and look great and participate in like, you know, looking what is kind of socially seen as beautiful.

48:35It's going to have that ripple effect on the rest of us. coming up after the break we're going to be talking about whether women can not can afford not to get Botox and tweakments when ageism is so rife in the workplace but first we've got a word

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49:25Emma: And thank you so much to Generate for making this episode possible. As I was immersed in doing this research around the cost, both kind of personal and financial for women getting uh tweakments kind of whatever kind of beauty processes we're all obsessed by I came across a story that reminded me about just how much pressure women particularly as we get older are to look a certain way in order to just maintain our professional lives a few weeks ago Elle editor Stacey Dugard it went viral for a video that she recorded basically admitting that she has been unemployed for 16 months. She has sent more job applications than she knows what to do with but cannot even get an interview.

50:15She then did a interview with the Times in which she talked about the pressures that are facing not just her but so many middle-aged women at work and why looking and seeming young might be more important than ever. I found this story so confronting. So sad. It's so sad. Just a bit of context on her. So she has basically gone broke. She's having to sell a home that was supposed to be her pension. A lot of this has followed. She got divorced a few years ago. You know, she's been, I think, in a different, difficult place kind of financially for a while, but has a really good CV. Like she was, you know, a very successful journalist.

50:55She's a published author. She's got a glittering cv she's worked with some of the biggest fashion brands you know in the world it's not like she's got some kind of you know crappy cv that makes her sort of unemployable but what she what i think is more interesting than the fact that she personally is struggling to get employment is the response that she got to this viral video so she put it on instagram and it very quickly went viral and got over a thousand comments was reshared just as many times and her inbox was filled with women basically saying me too relaying their own stories of struggling to get work being middle-aged and you know being really having a lot of degrees being really successful in their in their career to date and then suddenly being at this impasse in their middle age not being able to get employment there was one so she did after this this um piece went viral she did an interview with the times in which she detailed the sort of response that she's got from people and one of them really stood out for me it was a 49 year old former businesswoman who has recently taken a badly paid entry-level job that can be done remotely as you and is using a filter to make herself look younger in virtual meetings so far they haven't noticed she said to the times this just broke my heart what did you make of this piece the main thing

52:22Emma: that it made me think is I don't ever want to be in a position where I'm trying to be employed by anybody at that age. It made me think I need to own my own business before I'm 40 to be able to solidify my skills, myself as an asset and my earning capacity, and that I can't rely on the bias of what is inevitable when I submit a CV for a job. I think that's the biggest thing that came out for me. Totally. I just 100 % echo exactly what you said. I felt this immediate fear and that fear went to, I never want to be at the mercy of some fucking idiot deciding that I'm too old and too experienced for a job.

53:07Like that just does not. And that's not to say that I judge any of the women who in their, you know, tens, in their hundreds message Stacey saying that they are struggling. You know, there were women who'd worked in the NHS as consultants for years So they have a very specific skill set, which they'd worked for years, training up, getting all the necessary degrees in order to pursue as a profession. So I don't say that with any judgment on any of those people. I think it is shocking that we do have workplace ageism that is so rife and particularly as it pertains to women. but similarly I felt I kind of took a step back and I thought okay how do I make sure that I am never in a position whereby my age is an issue precluding me from doing good work and that is I think it's so much around entrepreneurship building your own businesses building your own ownership owning your own professional totally um I think there was one just given the context this conversation there was one line as well that really struck me in that one of stacy's friends had suggested to her that she needed to botox her cv uh saying that you can only have seven to eight years of experience so remove your age and basically be less is what the friend had said to her which again i think reinforces what we're saying i don't ever want to be in a position where i'm having to botox my cv to seem less impressive and younger in order to be able to get a job in someone else's company probably being paid less than what I would want.

54:35Emma: I think the other thing it made me think about is, you know, we speak a lot about the idea of the motherhood penalty and when you take time off work and, you know, your earning capacity plummets and it takes 10 years to get back to what you were earning before kids. And there's so many stats around that. And yet we've had these conversations about how to stay relevant and to stay employable. You should keep your skills up and you should be constantly investing and, you know, like making sure that your CV is up to date. Maybe it's doing courses while you've got kids at home, you know, like making an effort to stay relevant.

55:04Emma: So, for example, if you've taken time off pre-AI, making an effort to stay on top of that and involved in what's happening in the workplace so that you can still be relevant. But to me, it also just made me think, like, is that going to help, though? Because maybe it's actually just not. And I also think it's a wider question around ageism that we all have inherently. It's almost like this deep embedded, like if I think about even just, you know, really subconscious systemic racism that exists, I think that almost an adjacent is the way that we don't even realize how ageist all of us are to people that are older.

55:41Emma: There's almost this like, oh, cute or like, oh, so sweet. Or like, I notice it in the way that I think about like how much value is that person going to add and are they up to speed with what's happening with technological changes? And I think so many of those things are coming into play when someone is then like applying for a job. Yeah, actually, I was looking at the Times piece, actually, so the interview they did with Stacey. They had some really interesting data in there in terms of the prevalence of ageism in the workplace. And they found that the economic inactivity rate for women aged 50 to 64 is higher than that for men at the same age.

56:13So it's 30 % in 2025 compared with 22%. And then they go on to talk about the number of women. So the number of women in the UK is 60 ,000 women are out of work due to the menopause cost in the economy 1.5 billion. And these stats were kind of there as part of a broader picture around the disequilibrium really between men versus women in terms of how they're represented in the workplace as we get older. You see there's numerous factors contributing to that. That's motherhood, also menopause. There's so many things that are potentially affecting women's capacity to work in the way that's expected from them because we don't adjust our workplaces sufficiently.

56:52That's then having a kind of really deleterious effect. When I first read this, I felt that it was a perfect example of the pressure placed on women to stay young. Now, you cannot stay young. It is not biologically possible to stay young. Also, one only gets better professionally by more years doing the thing.

57:14Emma: Like, think about yourself at 20. I was so annoying. Useless. I was so insecure. Me too. I was honestly not much of an asset to the world. Me too. I have changed in so many ways for the better, the older I've got. And, you know, you speak about this in your book in terms of sex getting better with age. Everything, in my experience so far, has gotten better with age. so it seems insane to think that that is then the complete counter of what we're seeing with women's earning capacity as they get older totally because anecdotally so this is anecdotally this is not database but a very good friend of mine has raised capital a couple times for her business and she has always said to me you do not want to turn up in an investing investment meeting looking like a 10 looking like a 10 you're doubted you're like your team is too pretty like I undermine.

58:03She's like, you want to arrive looking like a seven. You want to look like you're the person who stays in the office till midnight. You're not too glam. You're not too pretty. You're a six or a seven. You're someone who's like not got pretty privilege. So their unconscious bias is assuming you're going to have to work doubly as hard to be successful. I'm not condoning this. I'm not quoting her baton. That's so interesting. But I thought it was an interesting perspective of like, it kind of flies in the face of what we're taught. Like you need to look hot because that's the pretty privilege is going to count in your favor.

58:37And her view was you don't want to look too hot. You want to look like someone who's always had to work for it because they want to see. You're so funny. Which is also toxic in its own way because, again, it's reducing women's, you know, success rate in investment and stuff to how we look. I mean, that is part of it. But we shouldn't get too over focused on that. but I did find an interesting point that actually like you know your looks can also stand against you and almost it was kind of reminds you like focus on the freaking work you're damned if you do you're damned if you don't exactly so you found some really interesting data with regards to people's kind of perception of them needing to look good to do well professionally that kind of shocked me because I'm really interested in in what the data says about whether pretty privilege is true or not.

59:26Whether what we're saying is actually true, people's perception of whether it's true is going to dictate behavior.

59:32Emma: So I think it's the perception that makes us spend. Totally. I was looking at some different stats on this and what I found was 15 % would consider plastic surgery to get a job or promotion. 20 % would consider Botox or fillers and 41 % would consider dyeing their hair if it helped their career. I think the interesting thing about this is that so much of it is subconscious. Yeah. And if I'm being completely honest, my spend on beauty, I don't think has to do with my career. I don't think I'm spending money thinking it's helping my career. Maybe I am without realizing it. I definitely am. But I'm not.

1:00:08Emma: I would say it's more about, and particularly in my 20s, I would say as much as I want to be like, I'm dressing for a woman, I'm dressing for a woman. Like I always wanted to be in a healthy, happy relationship. And so I wanted to sort of feel like I looked my best more in a dating sense I think than a professional sense I if I'm being really honest and I first was like it's because I'm on camera it's because I have to look at myself all the time and I was like that's such a cop-out that's me using that because it's a less vain less embarrassing in my head reason to be spending I agree but I also do think we have never seen ourselves so frequently in any part of history I was reading something on my site that was saying how actually really great new york times opinion piece yesterday on how we social media has basically meant that we increasingly just live in this hall of mirrors and it was only in the 18th century that we began to see our reflection as humans so for the kind of long expanse of human history we have not been able to see ourselves and now suddenly we're seeing ourselves all the time we are not meant to look at our own faces as much as we do today so i do just think that like you know especially when you're going through it having to edit your you know constant reels videos podcasts of your face it is so confronting it's inescapable it's that hall of mirrors but i think it's then just asking kind of what how can we kind of do that work but also not become totally obsessed with the image and kind of create some sort of separation but then also you know if you're not in this type of work you still feel the same pressure because you're still seeing because you're on instagram and you're seeing it all so i think actually probably a practical tip would be to do things like whether it's deleting Instagram, whether it's not taking photos for a while, and actually see if it impacts the spend in terms of what you then deem is necessary to spend on what you look like.

1:02:01Emma: Because I do think that if you pull back on the external pressures that you were just in your little ecosystem of being around friends and people who love you and are not around you because of what you look like. Yeah. Well, my two takeaways from this conversation, which I'm going to attempt to action, is one this is something i've just started doing not like disconnect from the fact of all this reading we've done for this podcast episode which freaked me out um but it's sliding halloween i was like i am gonna vomit deleting instagram on the weekend i just it is it takes over my life i spend so much time scrolling thinking it's research and i do get a lot of research out of it but at what cost you've got to make those decisions and two i'm actually going to pick something in my beauty regime per month that I can get rid of and put that money aside to invest.

1:02:51Emma: Yes, that's actually so good. That's so good. Even if it's a small amount, even if it's like 60 quid a month. No, that's not nothing. That's not nothing. Is that compound? So I'm going to do that. That's actually a really good idea. Yeah. So if anyone wants to do that with me, then slide into my DMs we can do it together. So before we finish, we want to tease a future conversation, future episode in which we're going to be discussing another very I don't know if it's a virally topical book, which is Margot's Got Money Troubles. It is a wonderful book. It's so entertaining. It's also been made into a TV show with Elle Fanning as a star on Apple TV.

1:03:26So if you don't have time to read it, you could also watch it. But I really would love, we'd both love for everyone to read or watch before. When are we going to do it? It's next. It's a week. You've got a few weeks.

1:03:35Emma: You've got a few weeks. Okay. Buyer and reader. It's really good. I'm only like 90 pages through and I'm the slowest reader of all time. And the fact that I had made it through that far is like kind of amazing so but it's really good i mean it's entertaining but the subtext and the conversation around money is really fascinating so i think you can listen to the episode whether or not you've read it but kind of fun if you wanted to it's i mean unofficial book club unofficial book club or tv club you can't the show is really really good so if you don't have time watch the show it's so fun thank you so much emma loved this conversation and for anyone that wants to read the sub stack that i wrote on this which is kind of i was gonna say embarrassing i need to stop using that word but like honest yeah honest we'll link it in the podcast show notes but um thank you so much for listening thank you so much for filling in for the book it's been so fun thank you so much for listening to the curve weekly make sure you hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening so you're always up to date with the latest finance and investing news and feel free to leave a comment to let us know what you thought about this episode because we would love your feedback we've got new curve weekly episodes for you to listen to every monday but until then listen to a raising the curve these are our in-depth podcast episodes where chat about all things money.

1:04:41Emma: We're also around all week on socials if you're hungry for more Curve content and all the links are in this podcast show notes. We hope you have a great week and we'll catch you for the next episode of The Curve Weekly on Monday.

1:04:58Emma: Okay, quickly, The Curve was created to empower and educate you about investing, but we are not financial advisors. Our platform exists for educational purposes only and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. And always remember to do your own research before making any investment or financial decision. We're here for any knowledge and support you need, but the final call is always yours. And thanks for being here. You got this. Yeah, we know you got this.