Wall Street Warlocks Are Using Botox to Help Erase Their Scowls

Remember how youthful and exuberant Gordon Gekko seemed in Wall Street when he was trying to siphon large piles of money from hard-working American hero Carl Fox? All that evil money necromancy can’t be good for one’s worry lines, which is why it’s so surprising that Gekko didn’t look like the haggard, woebegone, Wall Street goblin you might expect him to look like when Bud Fox first bursts into his office. Clearly, however, there’s a logical explanation for this cinematic inconsistency — Gordon Gekko was using Botox. Obviously.

According to data gathered by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Botox is gaining popularity among men, with about 363,000 men having received Botox injections in 2011, an 8 percent increase from the previous year (the number of women who used Botox, meanwhile, only rose by about 5 percent during the same period).

While getting regular Botox injections isn’t a cheap habit to pick up (forehead injections run about $350 and eyebrow injections can soar well north of $600), New York cosmetologist Dendy Engleman explained to Bloomberg TV that once men see how much more youthful and not haggard they seem after a round of Botox, they become regular clients. In other words, Botox is like any other expensive habit-forming substance, ahem, that people on Wall Street just simply can’t do without, which brings us to Dr. Engelman’s big reveal — men working on Wall Street (or men who say they’re working on Wall Street because they think it sounds cool) are her fastest-growing client base.

It makes sense that the old Wall Street lions would want to appear more youthful and vigorous so they don’t seem to the young, hotshot trading floor hyenas (yay for animal metaphors!) like they’re ready to be muscled out of their medium-to-medium-large-sized offices, but it must really ratchet up the office stress-level if at least a few traders are walking around in seeming states of perpetual surprise/alarm, as if the market just crashed and their eyebrows are too paralyzed with shock to even feign serenity.

During These Stressful Times, Wall Streeters Have Been Turning To Botox To Look More Refreshed [Business Insider]