Botox and the Patriarch — Letters that should have been in the new york times

1.13.24

To the editor:

While women are, by far and away, the major consumers of the multi-billion dollar beauty and anti-aging industry, it is the influences of a patriarchal society and the male gaze that creates the market. Women, and increasingly young girls, are expected to gratify a man's fantasy of physical perfection and, to wit, to ease their anxieties about getting old. When a 15-year-old girl feels she has to keep up with the 'beauty standard ... to stay young,' she is describing a culturally internalized and impossible standard that applies to girls and women, not boys and men. Jessica Grose (1.13.24 Botox destroyed what I like about my face) does her readers a great service by describing her struggle to embrace who she is rather than lose herself amidst these cultural pressures.

Respectfully

Larry S Sandberg

205 E 78 ST

NY NY 10075

917-846-8074

Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Weill Cornell Medical College