Has Botox killed eroticism?

It was only when Audra Bear, a 30-year-old breathwork teacher in Mexico, stopped getting Botox after two years of regular appointments that she noticed the difference it had been making in her relationship. What had been a “mask” for her emotions suddenly lifted. “I realised I had been stuck in emotional jail,” she says.

Bear first got Botox at her sister’s 30th birthday brunch. She was 27 and had watched her sister getting injections for over five years. “At the time I was going through a horrible breakup that involved me needing to file a restraining order and I was crying almost every day,” she says. A few days after Botox, the crying stopped. “I instantly felt a boost of confidence and started making more videos on social media,” she says. When the Botox started to wear off three months later, she made an appointment for another syringe. Eventually, after she entered a new relationship, a question lingered in Bear's mind – was her now-boyfriend still getting to know “the real her” with Botox? “I wanted to cry and express myself,” she says. “I wanted him to be able to read my emotions and truly know me and it feels amazing to be now seen so intimately.”

Bear’s realisation that Botox was impacting her relationship has scientific grounding – multiple studies have found that Botox can impair our ability to connect with others. Paula Niedenthal, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says our facial expressions help us to communicate and receive information from another person in a social interaction. “When we’re on the same page with somebody, we start to synchronise our emotional facial expressions and even our voice with the other person,” she says. This facial mimicry helps us recognize exactly how the other person is feeling. One 2011 study showed that emotional perception can become “significantly impaired” for people who get a cosmetic procedure that reduces muscular feedback from the face (Botox). Another found a link between Botox injections in the forehead and reduced empathy.

Before getting Botox, Niedenthal recommends asking yourself if you’re willing to compromise the quality of your face-to-face interactions in important, intimate relationships. But, despite the research linking Botox to potential relationship issues, the most popular Botox concerns circulating online are still physical (like skin sagging, volume loss or unintended paralysis). Beauty culture critic Jessica DeFino says this comes down to the beauty industry selling an aesthetic pursuit devoid of real human attraction. “We're weighing the cost-benefit of the socio-economic status of becoming beautiful versus the existential consequences in areas of our lives that are about meaning, connection and communication,” she says. “And it’s because we are not conceiving the concepts of beauty, desire and attraction in the multidimensional way that they exist in our lives.”

The irony of an aesthetic treatment like Botox potentially ruining your dating life is something that reminds DeFino of Raquel Benedict’s article Everyone Is Beautiful and Noone Is Horny. In the past, Benedict argues in the piece, “people worked out to look hot so they could attract other hot people and fuck them.” The ultimate goal was always pleasure and connection. Today, however, we don’t view our bodies as vehicles for pleasure but as investments to be optimised. “It is seen as embarrassing and co-dependent to want to be touched. We are doing this for ourselves, because we, apropos of nothing, desperately want to achieve a physical standard set by some invisible Other.”

DeFino has a theory that Botox is part of the reason why eroticism is dead. “Loneliness is on the rise and so I do wonder if there’s a link between the rise of Botox in the same demographics experiencing feelings of disconnection and sexual frustration,” she says. And, indeed, relationship changes can often start with a shift in our own self-image. For Bear, this even included looking down on Botox-free faces during the peak of what she calls her injectable addiction. “All of a sudden I didn’t like my face without it,” she says. “Botox had become my saviour and I started mentally judging other girls who didn’t have it”.

Georgia Woodard, owner of Pêche Skin Co. and licensed esthetician, got into a new relationship around six months into getting Botox regularly. Then in 2022, partway through dating, she stopped. “I remember him saying ‘Wow, you’ve gotten a lot more expressive,’” she says. They’ve since broken up and decided to be friends, but Woodard says he continues to point out how much more expressive she is now than when they were dating. “I was excited about something, it just wasn't coming across in my face or if I was happy, I just wasn’t getting the same interactions back from people,” she says. This bled into her professional life. As someone with a patient-facing role, she soon noticed that, after getting Botox, people thought she was much more stern or less friendly than before. “I had a couple of instances with patients where I realised my facial expressions weren’t matching what I was trying to get across,” she says. “I finally asked someone: ‘Does it seem like I’m upset or mad at you?’ and they said they thought I was.” 

Despite people treating Woodard differently with Botox (because her limited facial expressions were sending off mixed signals), she says she’s not anti-Botox altogether. She does, however, think we can collectively give the treatment “too much credit” and that people can easily become addicted to it. Because of this, Woodard often brings up her personal experience when patients ask her about Botox — not in an attempt to dissuade them but as a way to inform them of all the potential side effects of the neurotoxin. “I’ve certainly noticed that people react better to me now that I’ve stopped,” she says. “I tend to be warm and expressive but, with Botox, I was getting more negative interactions because I looked angry.” And perhaps people even knowing that’s part of the equation will encourage more injectable patients to choose their friendly (slightly wrinkled) natural faces.