Forget ageing gracefully – the modern man uses ‘brotox’ instead

Last month, I had supper with a male friend whose left eyebrow was cocked at an alarming angle, somewhere up by his hairline. Initially, I assumed he was angry about something – angry to the point of derangement. Was the Piccadilly Line playing up again? Had a string of Uber drivers cancelled on him?

No, he explained, with a manual attempt to push the rogue eyebrow back into place: he’d simply been for his “three-monthly refresh”. “It’ll calm down in a week or two.”

Although Brotox (male Botox) has been on the rise for years – with the British College of Aesthetic Medicine revealing last weekend that the number of men succumbing to injectables had increased by a whopping 70 per cent in the past two years – I can’t quite get used to this new plumped-out and sculpted breed of man.

For so long, we were envious of how immune men were to ageing – or, at least, to the criticism of how they were ageing.

Unlike women, who were urged to age “gracefully” and then viciously derided when they did, every line simply contributed to their “rugged good looks”. Every scar and blemish gave them “character”.

Then male film and pop stars in their 40s and 50s started to look 10 years younger, and the unflattering comparisons started. How can Brad Pitt still look so good? Why has Johnny Depp not succumbed to the same ravages as the rest of us?

Now that famous men such as Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan, Joe Jonas and Kanye West are openly speaking out about their tweakments – their Brotox, lasers and liposuction – it’s perhaps no wonder that male customers are taking up nearly one in five appointments.

Although I should be enjoying watching men fall prey to the same festering insecurities as women, I can’t pretend I welcome this new world of Dorian Grays. I’d be alarmed if my husband even dyed his hair or had a facial, and I certainly don’t want to come home to a man with a single angry eyebrow.