Botox Be Damned: “Strategic Wrinkles” are Now Trending

Botox has always had a straightforward assignment: Find the wrinkle, eliminate the wrinkle and repeat. But lately, I’ve noticed something strange happening to faces. The wrinkles are coming back...on purpose.

Not all of them, of course. We haven’t suddenly abandoned retinol, or canceled our dermatologist appointments. Instead, people are getting much more strategic about what they erase and, more interestingly, what they leave behind.

Call them strategic wrinkles. Rather than freezing every muscle, neurotoxin users are increasingly asking for softer dosing and more targeted placement, the goal being to relax certain lines while preserving enough movement to raise an eyebrow, scrunch a forehead or, look surprised. Some are treating the 11s between their eyebrows while leaving horizontal forehead lines alone. Others are spacing appointments farther apart or requesting fewer units.

The shift has become pronounced enough that The Wall Street Journal recently declared the completely smooth forehead out and strategic wrinkles in. The story follows 45-year-old executive Stephanie Abend, who spent years treating her forehead with Botox before realizing she actually wanted some of her lines back. She still gots Botox and filler, but deliberately leaves certain forehead wrinkles intact because an entirely smooth forehead began to feel less youthful than conspicuous.

For decades, the trajectory of cosmetic dermatology seemed to be moving in one direction: earlier and more. Remember we got preventative Botox, then baby Botox, which encouraged people to start treating lines before they technically had any? Now, we’re going in the opposite direction. 

Beauty culture loves extremes. We’re either supposed to age gracefully without touching our faces or wage a full-scale military operation against the nasolabial fold. But most women I know live somewhere between those poles.

Kendall Jenner, of all people, may be the perfect example. Earlier this year, the 30-year-old revealed that she had tried two rounds of what she called baby Botox in her forehead. But she didn’t particularly like the result. Why? Movement. Jenner explained that because her eyebrows sit fairly straight and low, she actually likes being able to move them. “I actually really enjoy the movement that I have,” she said.

Actress and director Olivia Wilde recently made this argument from the other side of the camera. Wilde said she finds it increasingly difficult to find actresses whose faces retain enough movement to fully express emotion on screen. She acknowledged the pressure actresses face to remain youthful, but her complaint speaks to us removing parts of our faces that make them interesting.

But this part isn’t new, there have always been famous women who resisted the needles. In 2014, Cameron Diaz talked about trying Botox and disliking the way it changed her face. She said she would rather watch her own face age than look at one that didn’t feel like hers, even describing her smile lines as evidence that she had spent her life smiling. And, the year before, Nicole Kidman similarly said that she stopped Botox because she wanted to be able to move her forehead again.

At the time, we thought those comments were just celebrities embracing aging, but I think what’s happening now is more nuanced and more realistic. Beauty culture loves extremes. We’re either supposed to age gracefully without touching our faces or wage a full-scale military operation against the nasolabial fold. But most women I know live somewhere between those poles. Maybe you hate the line between your eyebrows because it makes you look angry when you’re not. Maybe you don’t mind the little lines beside your eyes because they appear when you laugh. Maybe you want to soften your forehead but still be able to give your husband the look from across a crowded room (only me? Ok).

That is why I suspect strategic wrinkles have staying power. They fit into a larger recalibration happening in beauty, away from perfection and toward plausibility. We don’t necessarily want to look natural. We want to look like ourselves on an extremely good day.

So we’re just renegotiating the terms of Botox, and it’s definitely not canceled. I love Botox, afterall. 

But if you feel moved, soften the angry line. Keep that laugh line. And, please, let the eyebrows move if you must. If a tiny crease sneaks through when you raise them? Good. Botox be damned. That one can stay another six months.