Last summer, just after I turned 30, I had some Botox put in my frown line. It didn’t hurt (at least not if you have tattoos) and I am not embarrassed about it. Not regretful. Nor am I scared that now I’ve started, I won’t be able to stop – seven months have passed and I haven’t been back since – but I might well do in the future. 

I felt good about it because it looked good. Those few little injections somehow softened out the one ‘angry’ line on my forehead without expelling it completely. It was discreet but effective, in fact, no one even bothered to notice. ‘I got Botox!’ I told people, as though I was confessing to having just smoked my first cigarette behind the tennis courts. 

Except, I didn’t quite anticipate the judgy faces I got in response, which veered from concerned sympathy, ‘aaaawww, but you know you don’t need it,’ to the sedate and slightly detached ‘Oh my Gaahd, let’s see…?’ Then there were of course, the minor few who darted their eyes about my face, squealing, ‘where, where!? I really want to get some, who did you go to?’

The cavalcade of delicately negative responses exposed something I hadn’t quite realised pre-Botox: it totally polarises women. No, more than that, it drives a huge steely wedge right between us - those who do it and those who do not, and it’s from the latter group that I felt the slow sting of unconscious prejudgement.

"I was being silently shuffled into a metaphorical pile of peroxide Playboy bunnies, Saturday night TV presenters and Dale Winton"

As soon as I detected it, I became hyper-sensitized to it. It felt as though in other people’s minds, I was being silently shuffled into a metaphorical pile of peroxide Playboy bunnies, Saturday night TV presenters and Dale Winton. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘I am imagining things and my having had Botox has not – however minutely – altered the way other women view me.' But then, it seemed to be lurking around every corner, in the books I read and the newspaper columns I devoured. 

One female columnist routinely refers to it as ‘poisonous Botox’ in her many scathing attacks on the beauty industry, another scoldingly reminded us that ‘Botox is a poison’, as if those of us who have had it done might not have realised that it’s not organic and gluten-free. The high-cultured, highly intellectual women I was reading, however thinly it was worded, don’t like Botox and by extension, seemed to look down upon all who seek its youthenising, smoothing prowess.

Thank heavens then, for India Knight – a scion of common sense among all the snarking – who tackled the subject of ageing gracefully (whatever that means) in her recent novel, Mutton. On the subject of feminism and beauty, she said: ‘Feminism has a difficulty with vanity, which I find a bit odd. You could argue that vanity is nothing more than an expression of self-respect. You know, ‘I could look like shoe leather but I’d rather not.’

And that’s the crux of it really; how far you are willing to go with Botox, aesthetics and vanity is wholly subjective. It's about choice. And choice is at the heart of feminism. Therefore, women – newspaper devouring women like me – should be credited with enough intelligence to have made an informed decision to do something which in some way enhances their appearance without being scolded or chastised or condescended to.

"Some people consider it to be wildly narcissistic, but narcissism is how self-preservation is expressed" - Dr Sam Bunting

Even celebrities have taken to bating each other for having sunk to the depths of Botox. Lily Allen referred to the ‘bunch of sterile f***ing Botoxed celebrity idiots’ that surrounded her when she first entered the music industry. While I have no doubt that Allen’s fame posse was an inherent disappointment compared to those of the Britpop era, it’s insightful that Botox has become a recognisable byword for frivolity, conceit, gaucheness and stupidity. 
    
Look beyond the surface of women’s biological predisposition to judge one another and something else becomes clear - Botox-bashing is a particularly homegrown trait. ‘It’s a peculiarly British sort of attitude,’ suggests consultant dermatologist, Dr Sam Bunting. ‘Some people consider it to be wildly narcissistic, but narcissism is how self-preservation is expressed. You wouldn’t get this attitude in France or America. It’s as though if you’re seen to be taking too much care of your appearance, something is seriously wrong with you.’

Of course, much of the ridicule comes from more than a decade of widespread rubbish Botox; frozen foreheads and over-arched eyebrows that made women look like deranged fem-bots. Fortunately, that’s all changed. ‘The current trend in aesthetics is looking natural, but healthy skin is also important, this is what makes you look younger,’ explains Dr Jules Nabet, is a leader in his field with practices in Kensington and Paris and the man who administered my Botox. He’d call it Baby Botox though, an alternative to the heavier handed version which he conceived himself to offer a far more subtle result from which your face can actually move afterwards. 

‘Botox can only soften a line or wrinkle – it does not help with the skin’s radiance.’ Indeed, a great skin serum can do serious good to skin these days, and carries within it plenty of what you’d call ‘toxins.’ And yet Botox is still referred to as some sort of barbarianism. In principle then, I see no difference between injectables than having a deep and thorough facial, or laser hair removal or any of the other myriad of treatments we undertake as a vehicle to looking and/or feeling like a better version of ourselves.

"Would Germaine Greer, Jeanette Winterson and Maya Angelou have considered it a betrayal to their cause?"

To me, it’s no more extreme than coating your hair (and your scalp) with hydrogen-peroxide, also a poison – and one which is far more deadly if ingested than Botulinum Toxin. ‘The word ‘toxin’ is instantly off-putting,’ explains Dr Bunting. ‘People may object until you explain to them that the same toxins have been used in medicines far longer than they have for aesthetics. Life is full of toxins – a vitamin can be a toxin taken in the wrong quantity.’

But then, after all this posturing, I also had to ask myself the question – why did I care so much? I suppose, in my eagerness to know what my friends thought of my Botox, I was still wrestling with my decision to have had it done as much as I was trying to unpick the prejudice. 

Considering injectables is a moment in which you are confronted with your own moral code, your own belief system - like deciding whether to have your child baptised or privately educated, or even which way to vote. It requires you to look at yourself in the mirror and decide who the person is staring back at you. I thought of all those female authors I’d grown up reading. Would Germaine Greer, Jeanette Winterson and Maya Angelou have considered it a betrayal to their cause, a betrayal to women? Am I now unwelcome in that group? Have I traded in my intelligence for vanity? Because it seems in today’s society, you can have one and not the other. Ultimately, I reasoned, they’d want me to do whatever the hell I wanted to with my body. And so now, I am.