The day I got Botox for the first time, I went upstairs and wrote an entry in my journal. It wasn’t a casual afterthought. I sat on my bed, pen in hand, with the strange certainty that this was a moment that I needed to document.

I’d crossed a line I couldn’t uncross, not because Botox procedures are dramatic, or extreme, or even particularly noticeable – but because that day symbolised something more. I’d accepted I was getting older.

I’d reached that stage of womanhood when you start thinking about turning back the clock, anti-ageing yourself. The faintest of wrinkles were beginning to appear on my face and I wanted them gone.

I was 27 years old.

A few days after the procedure, I woke up and couldn’t move my forehead. It was a bizarre sensation and I jumped up to look at myself in the mirror. I scrunched harder – still nothing – and laughed at myself.

Then I looked closely at my face: I felt prettier, fresher, more put together.

My forehead might have been paralysed by Botox but I could breathe more freely. It settled the panicky voice inside me that worried about ageing. To be honest, it felt deeply emotional.

If you’re thinking 27 is early to start Botox, for my generation, it’s not. If anything, I feel like I’ve left it late.

What I have is called ‘baby’ Botox, or preventative Botox, a concept that didn’t really exist even a decade ago. The idea is to start having the procedure in your 20s so you stop deep wrinkles from ever forming at all.

You’re not fixing anything; you’re intervening before there’s something to fix.

So no, 27 didn’t feel young; in fact, I felt as though I needed to catch up with those who’d been having the treatment even younger than me. An ITV poll last year found that one in five 18 to 25-year-olds had had some form of Botox or filler.

Since that first appointment, I’ve had Botox every three to four months, almost like clockwork.

In just over two and a half years, it has probably cost me over £3,000, with each session priced at £305. And that cost is on top of my other, less frequent, beauty treatments. I’ve been getting lip filler every two years for the past eight years since I was 21.

At only £100 a treatment, these 0.5ml injections are my least favourite procedure to have done (horrific, enormous needles) but the most important for my self-confidence (I love my smile so much more now).

I have also microbladed – temporarily tattooed on – my eyebrows for the past six years.

It totally changed the game for me and made me love my face with no make-up. That costs £300 for the first session, but only £170 for each smaller session, and you only need to get it topped up every year to a year-and-a-half. 

My latest treat tweak is lip blush (£150 for an initial session, £50 for a top-up each year), which, much like microblading, is when you have colour tattooed onto your lips. I booked my appointment the day after my friend told me my lips were so pale that if I lay on a hospital bed, she’d have thought I was dying.

It left me shaken. I know it’s a small thing, but why would I not fix it when the solution is so easy?

The grand total cost of everything I’ve had done so far comes to more than £4,400.

If I keep regularly topping up my treatments, I’m likely to spend another £2,700 in the next two years. I think the work is worth it. 

Last month, the actress Kate Winslet lamented the fact that so many women are turning to tweakments – Botox, fat jabs, fillers and so on – to change or freeze their appearance.

Young women like me don’t know what ‘real beauty’ is, she said. I’ve heard others tut and roll their eyes, too, calling us vain or self-indulgent for doing it.

Why do I feel the need to begin ‘meddling’ with my ‘perfect’ skin when I’m still so young? Surely I’m being exploited by a beauty industry that first makes me feel insecure about a perfectly natural ageing process, then monetises that insecurity by offering chemical injections to fix it?

But don’t they see that judging us is just as bad? Our decision to try to hold on to a more youthful appearance as we get older is one we’ve made through choice. 

And why wouldn’t we do it if we can? It may be high maintenance but it’s a price I am more than happy to pay. By doing Botox, I have bought myself peace of mind.

In any case, I’m saving myself time and money in other ways. If my forehead is flawless, I don’t need expensive skincare products and tons of make-up.

Together with the filler and lip blush, I have confidence in how I look, which means I can wake up and leave the house almost as I am. The fact is, everyone is constantly comparing themselves to everyone else.

Women my age who haven’t had Botox often make a point of telling me: ‘I’ve never had anything done.’ Of course, the judgment is implicit. Often it feels less like sharing and more like comparing, as though they are actually saying: ‘I don’t need it.’ Or worse: ‘I think less of you for getting it.’

The worst criticism, however, comes from older women. My 65-year-old mum thinks I got Botox too young, that I am beautiful as I am and will be as I age.

My nan, who is 91, looks at my face and tells me I don’t need anything done at all.

But neither of them lives in the world my friends and I inhabit, where we’re hyper-conscious of body image and looks.

Ironically, my nan gets Botox herself – in the back of her neck – to stop her head shaking. Botox isn’t just cosmetic; it’s medical and regulated. It can treat migraines, excessive sweating and muscle spasms. Yet when it’s used on women’s faces, it becomes some sort of moral issue.

It seems to me that there truly is no neutral way for women to age. And despite the odd comment, younger people do tend to be more open-minded.

It was actually my sister who first suggested I get Botox. She’s six years older than me and started getting it at 29.

Her decision to start didn’t feel shocking or extreme; it felt practical. She said it made her feel more confident, that it had helped her feel more like herself.

She also told me something I didn’t fully understand until later: once you start getting Botox, you’ll never look at people’s faces the same way again – and she was right.

Before Botox, I wouldn’t give women’s foreheads a second glance but now I notice everything; it’s like an addiction. Who has lines that move? Who doesn’t? Who’s had it recently? Who’s due a top-up?

These are observations rather than judgments but it does make me realise how cosmetic interventions quietly train our eyes.

Once you learn the visual language of tweakments, you can’t unsee them. I notice the fine lines around strangers’ eyes when they smile or the crevices that remain between their eyebrows after they stop frowning.

I see corrections in celebrities and friends whose faces have stopped creasing when they (try to) raise their brows.

Pressure to get Botox doesn’t come from one place. It isn’t just celebrities or influencers. It’s sisters and colleagues. It’s group chats and birthday dinners and casual admissions over wine. It’s TikTok filters that smooth your skin automatically and make a wrinkle-free face feel like the default. It is the physical and virtual worlds we now live in.

If I’m taking a selfie, I’m far more likely to use TikTok than my normal camera. The filter just makes everything look better. That does something to your brain, whether you want it to or not.

 So, yes, it’s my decision and my choice but of course I’m aware that it’s not been made in a vacuum – rather in the context of these other pressures. Aren’t all choices and decisions affected by everything around you?

I don’t think I’d have Botox if no one else did. I didn’t wake up one day and decide, independently, that this was something I needed. I saw how normal it was and I followed the trend because I wanted to. And I don’t regret it for a second.

Men, in my experience, don’t really care. They either don’t notice or, if they do, they’re largely indifferent. Straight men, especially, seem remarkably unaffected by whether a woman has wrinkles or not.

That diary entry I wrote after my first appointment still sticks with me because it wasn’t really about Botox at all. It was about time.

The year I turned 27 was the year I began to notice myself ageing – not just physically but mentally. Yes, some lines didn’t fade after I laughed but there was also a shift I couldn’t name.

I was still calling my mum for help with the smallest inconveniences and still going out dancing with my friends.

But I was also getting excited about air fryers and the best-smelling cleaning products in the supermarket.

The things that mattered to me were shifting. I was more focused on the idea of stability and responsibility. My worries narrowed to a future that felt closer and more real.

The actual process was alarmingly short for what felt like such a significant turning point in my life. A nurse practitioner came to my house just after midday on a Wednesday. She did my sister’s Botox so I felt safe with her.

I remember the light in the downstairs living room, bright but soft, and the odd intimacy of it happening somewhere so familiar.

She asked me to scrunch my face, frown, raise my eyebrows, then marked my skin with a pen where my muscles creased and contracted: across my forehead, between my brows and around my eyes. The three areas everyone talks about are the most common places to get Botox: the preventative zones.

I hate needles but her hands were gentle and the procedure itself was quick, almost anticlimactic. Some friends who had also had the injections later told me it made them feel claustrophobic, as though they were trapped inside their own skin, but I just felt... still.

When it fully settled, I couldn’t stop looking at my face. My forehead felt smooth, almost glass-like.

There were other tiny changes, too. My make-up sat better when I put it on and even without make-up, I just felt prettier.

I don’t get Botox because I’m trying to completely stop the process of getting older. It wears off, after all – though when it does, it feels more like a soft landing.

My face will keep changing no matter what I do, but I reserve the right to resist wearing my age on my skin for as long as I am able to.

I might never stop getting Botox and why should I? I love it.

As told to Rosie Beveridge