Nail varnish fine. But Botox and lip fillers? Come on, Superdrug

As a teenager, I spent many a happy hour perusing the makeup aisles in Superdrug with my friends, filling our baskets with dubious purchases such as lurid bottles of 99p nail varnish. And while I might fork out £40 today for the odd eyeshadow palette, in my 30s, my makeup bag remains filled with Superdrug’s cheap and cheerful staples, not least because it seems to do a better job than most retailers in stocking products that suit brown skin.

So it jarred when I heard that its latest wheeze is offering Botox and lip fillers in-store. After a phone consultation, customers will be able to combine a quick facial injection with picking up their lunchtime sandwich. Perhaps execs think it’s the natural step for this savvy chain, where rising profits have made it one of a shrinking number of high street success stories. The size of the cosmetic procedures market has quintupled in five years, as non-surgical “tweakments” have been popularised by shows such as Love Island – prominently sponsored by Superdrug – and reality stars such as the Kardashians. Clinics have reported a spike in inquiries, with young girls coming in with photos of Love Island contestants to show the look they’re striving for.

But what the hell is Superdrug playing at? Having borne the discomfort and expense of zapping my arm hair with lasers, I’m in no position to judge those who opt for Botox. But I’ve certainly got a view on a retailer that is happy to normalise lip and cheek fillers, even as its aisles are filled with tweens stocking up on face masks for sleepovers. And that’s no coincidence: Superdrug’s successes have come from deliberately targeting younger customers. As well as sponsoring Love Island, it stocks cheaper and hipper makeup brands than its more upmarket rival Boots and has rolled out partnerships with bloggers such as Zoella. Imposing an over-25 age restriction on its in-store cosmetic procedures nowhere near cuts it ethically. It’s still a high street brand that consciously markets itself to teenage girls, implicitly telling them they should think about signing up for a lifetime of Botox injections.

Superdrug should also be wary from a safety perspective. Maybe its bosses have justified their foray into Botox by telling themselves it will make it easier for women to negotiate their way through a scandalously unregulated market.

In 2013, Bruce Keogh, then medical director of the NHS, described some aspects of the cosmetic procedures industry as “a crisis waiting to happen”. Too little has changed since then. There are no compulsory qualifications required to start injecting someone’s face with chemicals. While Botox must at least be prescribed, if not administered, by a medical practitioner – and Superdrug says its treatments will be carried out by trained nurses – dermal fillers are completely unregulated, unlike in the US, and it’s not uncommon to find beauty therapists offering treatment in their own home.

Experts have warned of an alarming rise in the number of botched procedures that can leave people with lifelong problems. This is an industry driven overwhelmingly by upselling rather than the Hippocratic oath, yet it liberally deploys quasi-medical language – “medispas” – and clinical white uniforms to reassure consumers that they are patients, not customers. If I were Superdrug, I’d take a salutary lesson from the PIP breast implant scandal, where hundreds of thousands of women were given implants prone to rupture and leak.

Of course, Botox and lip fillers sit on a spectrum. The truth is there’s a darker side to many of the products that already fill Superdrug’s chirpy shelves – creams that will take years off, hair dye to cover up those stray greys. Its stores are chock-full of stuff that promises to make you look younger and more beautiful. Very few women are immune to the constant slew of marketing that tells us we need to look this way to be more successful.

That’s because we all know there’s some truth in it. Appearance discrimination is rife and ageism affects older women far more acutely than it does men. Where are the grey-haired female newsreaders? Research shows that people assume beautiful people have a range of other positive attributes, including intelligence and kindness, and those universally regarded as attractive get an earnings premium, regardless of their occupation. I might not think Love Island contestant Megan Barton-Hanson, who’s been open about the £25,000 she’s spent enhancing her appearance, is a particularly positive role model for young girls. But she didn’t exactly do badly with the boys on the show.

It all reinforces an unhealthy, but real-world message: looks do matter, especially if you’re female. And so, as rates of body dissatisfaction have increased and social media puts more pressure on young girls to look good than ever, women face a lose-lose dilemma. Go along with the pressure to look young and beautiful or stand up to it and potentially pay the price? Even as I dislike the subliminal messaging I need to dye out my greys to be successful, neither do I like them, and I’m not prepared to stop doing it. Meanwhile, the beauty industry develops ever more far-fetched treatments, from vampire facials to fat freezing (yes, really).

And so maybe all we can do is recognise we’re all complicit in the beauty rat race to some extent, while trying to keep a lid on its worst incarnations. More regulation of cosmetic procedures is a no-brainer, as is appealing to celebrities to think a bit harder about the messages they’re sending to those who follow them. We need to pressurise the tech companies to ban those apps, aimed at children as young as nine, that gamify plastic surgery. And Superdrug, I implore you: please rethink the decision to make the leap from in-store eyebrow threading to lip fillers.

• Sonia Sodha is an Observer columnist and chief leader writer