Wrinkles Begone!

I cringe when TV commercials show actresses applying mascara. “What if that filthy brush pokes you in the eye?” I would not tolerate inserting contact lenses. “Touch my eyeball? Ee-w-w”

Lots of people are less squeamish according to an article in the current “New Yorker”. Americans received more than 7 million neurotoxin injections in 2018. Good old Botox will kill you if you ingest it, but an injection under your epidermis will paralyze your facial nerves leaving you with smooth, wrinkle-free skin, not unlike that of a department store mannequin. Kim Kardashian is a poster child for Botox. She is 41 and will continue to look 21 until she is 81.

What if those wrinkles just can’t be Botoxed away? Enter Juvederm and Restylane, hyaluronic acid-based fillers that will fill in those fine lines and wrinkles and, best of all, can actually restructure noses, jawlines, and cheeks without the pain and recovery period of plastic surgery.

The bad news is that they only last six months to a year. The good news is that treatments can cost as little as $700. That’s a lot less than you spend on gas for your car over six months and a tankful of Exxon Unleaded doesn’t make you look like Kim Kardashian.

Americans spent $16.5 billion (with a b) on cosmetic enhancements like Botox and Juvederm in 2018. In comparison, Pfizer expects COVID vaccine sales of about $34 billion since 2020. “Anti-vaxxers” claim “I’m not putting anything that I’m not sure about into my body just to prevent spreading a disease that has killed more than one million Americans”. I wonder how many of them have allowed a deadly poison like Botox into their body just to look good. Based on sales numbers, quite a few probably have done so.

By Ed Dufton