Botox for Breakfast: On beauty standards, social pressure and the constant drive to fix ourselves

There’s been a noticeable change in the way people talk about plastic surgery lately. People talk about it the same way they talk about what they’re having for breakfast, as if getting injections in your face before going out to dinner is just another errand. In many circles, it’s become something expected, almost routine. Being open about it isn’t the issue though. What concerns me is how easily it has slipped into being treated as standard, even obligatory. It’s discussed like basic upkeep rather than a significant medical choice, and suddenly it feels strange if you won’t participate.

I have heard things like, “Everyone does it,” “Why haven’t you gotten Botox yet,” and “It is a status thing.” People say these things casually, as if they are describing a new phone upgrade. But framing cosmetic procedures as a status symbol reveals something deeper. It shifts the conversation from beauty to hierarchy, from personal decisions to social signaling. It turns your face into something you’re expected to upgrade, and somehow we’ve all accepted that.

There is also this other message floating around, the one meant to sound encouraging: “Do whatever makes you feel beautiful. No judgment.” It sounds supportive, but underneath, it functions like a blank check for an industry that only survives if you feel perpetually insufficient. And lately it’s even being framed as something empowering or even spiritually meaningful (!!), which is a stretch so dramatic it borders on self deception. Not everything we choose to do needs a moral or sacred justification, and trying to turn cosmetic procedures into something holy feels like its own form of manipulation. Autonomy and cultural critique can absolutely exist at the same time. A person can choose something for themselves and still be influenced by the world around them. Pretending those influences do not exist is unrealistic and unfair.

All of this makes it easier for beauty standards to shift without anyone questioning them. And when those standards keep rising and reinventing themselves every six months, how are you supposed to avoid feeling pressure to do more? That is not self-love. That is an abyss that keeps expanding, one no individual can ever fill, because the standard itself is designed to stay out of reach.

Then there is the wellness contradiction. We are living in an era obsessed with “clean living". We avoid chemicals, seed oils, plastics, toxins, synthetic ingredients. We filter water, read every label, dry brush, detox, and micromanage every corner of our lives in the name of health. Yet injecting neurotoxins into our faces is considered completely normal. We treat Botox like brushing our teeth. It is accepted instantly and unquestioningly, even though it has nothing to do with health or longevity. It is simply considered a requirement for maintaining social value.

There is also the issue of how easily unhealthy, disordered, and outright pathological behavior gets normalized online. We see extreme routines, obsessive regimens, body-altering procedures, and hyper-fixation portrayed as "goals" instead of concerning. When something is repeated often enough, with good lighting, a filter, confident delivery and some great background music, it stops looking alarming and starts looking like a standard to aspire to. The digital world has a way of making dysfunction look desirable, and that distortion feeds directly into why so many people feel they are falling behind before they even start.

Which is why the focus has to be on the culture that creates these pressures, not the people simply trying to survive within it.

This is not about shaming anyone’s personal decisions. It is about naming a culture that treats changing your face and avoiding aging as a form of responsibility, while treating aging naturally as a personal failure. It is not about controlling what people do with their bodies. It is about questioning why the bar for what we must do to be accepted keeps rising.

I’m not anti–plastic surgery. I’m anti the idea that we’re supposed to hate parts of ourselves until we “fix” them. Because that self-hatred doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s shaped by a culture that teaches us what is acceptable to look like. And we deserve to talk about that without it being framed as judgment or as hating other women or undermining anyone's autonomy.

All of this connects to the larger conversation about luxury and social pressure. It's all a part of the same pattern. We have built a culture where everything becomes a symbol of status, from our bodies to our skin to our routines. We are encouraged to upgrade, optimize, refine, treat ourselves, keep up, and chase things that promise satisfaction but never deliver it. It becomes emotionally numbing, because satisfaction never arrives. The goalpost keeps moving.

This machine thrives on your dissatisfaction. It needs you to believe that you are always one purchase, one procedure, one lifestyle tweak away from finally feeling good enough. Beauty standards are never harmless. They influence how we value ourselves, how we spend money, how we age, and how we relate to our own reflection.

And we’re seeing the extremes of this play out in real time. Look at someone like Bryan Johnson, the tech millionaire whose entire life has become a full-time project in trying to outsmart aging. His regimen is so intense and so detached from anything resembling a normal or mentally healthy existence that it almost reads like satire. He is a perfect example of where this obsession can lead, because even with endless money, access, procedures, supplements, lasers, and routines, he still looks like a man desperately trying to outrun something inevitable.

What happens when the injections stop working the way they used to, or when they become more invasive, or when your face changes in ways that cannot be controlled? At some point, everyone has to face the reality of aging. No one escapes it. No amount of money or access will stop it. You cannot buy your way out of being human.

The more we treat these procedures as normal, expected, or symbols of status, the more we feed a culture that profits from our discomfort. The more we buy in, the more the bar rises. The more we comply, the more the machine grows.

Maybe the problem is not our faces or our bodies. Maybe the problem is the system that keeps convincing us to spend endless time, money, and emotional energy fighting a battle that no one was ever meant to win.