Jabbing my way to a ‘Clooney jaw’
Shocked by daily Zoom close-ups, Simon Mills, like a growing number of men, decided ‘Brotox’ was the only way to banish his lockdown lines
Dr Michael Prager, founder of the Dr Prager Skincare product line, proprietor of a smart clinic on Beauchamp Place in London (said to be the largest consumer of Botox in Europe), and pioneer of the “nonsurgical facelift”, is a seasoned practitioner of cosmetic medicine. He also a likes to make his patients laugh. Ironic, really, when you consider that the lion’s share of his work is making laughter lines disappear.
I went to see him for a cheeky lunchtime “Brotox” consultation and, as I sat down in a comfy white upholstered chair, he asked a few questions about my general health. “Do you exercise regularly?” Prager wondered, primed hypodermic in hand. “Yes,” I said, proudly. “Regular cycling and running.”
“Thought so,” the doc replied. Teutonic and poker-faced, with the needle now hovering over my oral area, he closely examined and gently pinched my fatty Yorkshire skin (which had proved impermeable to previous Botox treatments), while I waited for a soothing, age-related compliment. “The more fit men are, the worse they look… the more they look close to death.”
I was there because I had heard great things about Dr Prager’s maverick needlework and the development of what he was calling “the English look”. A subtle set of “tweakments” that would freshen and effectively firm up a middleaged man’s saggy-jawed, cross-looking, ventriloquist’s-dummy-mouthed face (ie mine), rather than create the suspiciously smooth, Photoshopped forehead and startled cartoon eyes that one sees on everything from reruns of Towie to RuPaul’s Drag Race and Match of the Day on the television.
It was my sad-sack eyes and forehead I was most concerned about, I told him. “Shall we start there?” I suggested, pointing to a permanent frown and darkly funereal ocular zone. “So, you want to look like Simon Cowell?” said Dr Prager. “I don’t think so.”
Oh dear. A swift bit of Googling revealed that London-born Cowell, a former repeat Botoxer, no longer has “the English look” that men are aspiring to these days. Years of needling have culminated in a face that Cowell himself described last week as resembling “something out of a horror film”, provoking “hysterics” from his eight-yearold son, Eric. Cowell has now weaned himself off the stuff.
Cowell is swimming against the tide: in 2020, with the country stuck at home and facing a computer screen, UK plastic surgeons reported a 70 per cent rise in men requesting video consultations for injectable procedures, such as Botox and fillers. The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons nicknamed the phenomenon “the Zoom boom”, citing a survey revealing that 11 per cent of men believed that lockdown had aged them by five years.
Only five years? I remember 2020 as the year that this camera-shy, 50-something man suddenly had to be ready for his close-up on a daily basis, the cruel, truth-telling laptop camera lens apparently adding a decade every time I “joined” a meeting and waved from my kitchen table. The pressure to look Insta-ready good escalated almost every day that summer. Which is how I ended up in Dr Prager’s chair.
Not that men (apart from me) are telling anyone about their Harley Street visits. According to research conducted by RightClinic.com, of the 10 per cent of British men undergoing cosmetic procedures – mostly 35- to 45-year-olds and newly divorced – one in five keep their lunchtime treatments to themselves, with 11 per cent even paying in cash so that the bill does not show up on bank or credit card statements.
So, where had the 62-year-old Cowell gone wrong? It was a fate I was keen to avoid, though I was keener still to rid myself of my lockdown frown. Jeremy Langmead, author of Vain Glorious: A Shameless Guide for Men Who Want to Look Their Best, has sage advice. “Face or body,” he says flatly. “Remember when Nigel Lawson lost all that weight? He suddenly looked 20 years older.
“At a certain age, a man has to choose between one or the other. Simon Cowell made the mistake of thinking that he could lose a load of body weight [he is reported to have shed 60lb] and also rescue his face. You simply can’t do both.”
As a vain, middle-aged man with a droopy mouth and deepening eye wrinkles, whose shocking BMI reading recently categorised him as officially “overweight”, but who still aspires to Brad Pitt levels of henchness, this is very bad news indeed.
“Afraid so,” says Langmead, a regular “Brotoxer” himself. “And unless you happen to have a lucrative online business with OnlyFans, the choice should always, always be face.”
To avoid what the gay community likes to term the “Man-da Holden” look of Pixar eyes and featureless skin tones that seem to have been selected from Farrow & Ball’s “dead flat” paint chart, Langmead suggests a simple instruction to your Botox practitioner: to make you look “rested”.
“Lifting weights makes a middle-aged man pull all sorts of unnatural and ugly faces. This can cause permanent damage and make a man look tired, stressed and fatigued. Do Botox little and often, so that no one ever notices any drastic change, but might occasionally comment that you look well, or as though you have had a good night’s sleep.”
But injecting fillers can help by creating volume, counters Dr Prager. “If you are actively burning fat all over your body, the face also loses fat, especially in the cheek area, making the face look gaunt and tired. Look at footballers and professional cyclists – often they age much faster than normal, especially after they have retired.
“It sounds like a cliché, but probably the best you can hope for is to look good for your age. It’s no longer cool to try and knock 10 or 20 years off.
And it never works, anyway. I mean, who wants to look like Cliff Richard?”
Botox is, by the way, a bit 10 years ago. The go-to treatment for men in 2022 is Profhilo, an evolutionary “beneath the skin” moisturising treatment, which is delivered via injection as a hyaluronic acid injectable gel, remodelling tissue and increasing skin laxity. Ideal for a chap’s droopy jawline and jowly mouth, it costs about £720 for two treatments, one month apart. Pocket money for Simon Cowell, of course.
The price tag hasn’t frightened men off, though, because despite inflation, war and rocketing domestic bills, business in Profhilo, Botox and fillers is booming – with lockdown proving to be a particular boost for the male treatments industry.
Personally, I also think that there’s a whiff of Marvel comic superhero, Bond baddie stuff at play here. As any overgrown schoolboy knows, the amount of stuff that gets injected into the foreheads of television presenters, influencers and movie stars is actually minuscule. It has to be, because it is one of the most lethally toxic substances known to man, more deadly than arsenic and polonium. Botulinum toxins block nerve functions and can cause respiratory and muscular paralysis resulting in death. It might sound like a substance invented by Ian Fleming for one of his more farfetched characters to dabble with while on his mission for global domination, but the shocking truth is that just a gram of botulinum toxin would be enough to kill millions of people.
And yes, I was thinking about this as Dr Prager jabbed his slender needle into my neck. “We will be much better off accentuating your masculinity. Which means improving the jawline with a few jabs of lower-face, masseter muscle-targeting Belotero Botox.”
In lay terms, we have decided against Simon Cowell, perma-surprised, sad doggy eyes and opted instead for “Clooney jaw”.*
‘The more fit men are, the worse they look – the more they look close to death’