With California-based Allergan Inc. expecting approval of botox for cosmetic use shortly, the ASPS predicts that the product's popularity "could increase exponentially."Botox can iron out wrinkles earned over years of facial movements, such as smiling and frowning, concentrating and squinting. In addition to the most popular complaints — furrows between the eyebrows, crow's feet and forehead lines — women in particular get botox injections to correct some imperfections of their lips and necks. Recently, botox has found yet another use: a "chemical brow lift" to restore the arch to falling eyebrows. (Outside the cosmetic sphere, botox is used not only for muscle control, but also to treat migraine headaches and other types of pain and to eliminate excessive sweating, or "hyperhydrosis.")

Botox Has a Predominately Female Clientele

Most botox users are women (88 percent, according to the ASPS), and most are aged 35 to 50 (59 percent). Says Kevin Poitras, M.D., who treats some 100 people each year with botox injections in his Bethesda, Md., dermatology office, "My patients aren't satisfied with growing old gracefully. They say 'I don't feel old. I don't think old. Why should I look old?'"For $300 to $1,000 per treatment — $366 on average, according to the ASPS — botox can restore a refreshed appearance to aging faces that are starting to look anxious, tired or angry. "I knew it was time to do something when people started looking at me and asking 'Are you mad'?" says 40-year-old Anna Masica, an aesthetician at a Bethesda, Md., spa who turned to botox earlier this year to get rid of bothersome frown lines between her eyes."I feel better about myself knowing my forehead doesn't always look scrunched up," Masica says. "I feel I look younger, and my makeup doesn't end up in the creases between my eyes like it used to by the end of the day."