Thinking Botox with Barth
Toward a Theology of Beauty and Aging
About the author: Sara is the McDonald-Agape Research Fellow in Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen. She is working with Professor Tom Greggs on the Ecclesiology After Christendom project. Sara recently completed her PhD on the concept of divine personhood in Karl Barth. She is passionate about theological study, especially modern and contemporary doctrines of God, and its import for the life of the church and world. She currently lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, with her husband and two daughters.
Women are increasingly under pressure to erase any hint of the aging process from their faces and bodies. As a middle-aged woman, I feel this pressure as the signs of my time on this earth appear on my face—the dreaded eleven lines on my forehead. The reality is that “tweakments,” such as Botox, fillers, and facelifts have become so common that social media users tend to respond with negative critique of public figures that look their age, such as the backlash Kate Middleton and Sarah Jessica Parker have endured for their appearance.1
One of the greatest “sins” a woman can commit is aging in public. However, as Sarah Laing noted, if Kate Middleton (or Sarah Jessica Parker) decided to undertake any obvious anti-aging treatments, they would face another uproar. The backlash comes from both directions—for having the audacity to age publicly and for noticeably taking part in cosmetic procedures. The expectation is that women are to appear naturally ageless and not obviously “tweaked.”
First and foremost, I want to be abundantly clear that my reflection on our culture’s disdain for the aging process is not a judgment on those who have cosmetic procedures. I am concerned with the expectation of appearing naturally ageless. There are countless and important ways I could reflect on this issue, but for this piece, I am reflecting on the problem of aging in conversation Karl Barth’s theology that affirms the goodness and gift of the limitation of our finite time on this earth.
One could question why I am choosing to think theologically about cosmetic procedures and aging. Why waste time focusing on something so trivial? Isn’t this simply an issue of the sin of vanity? Case closed.
This issue should not be so easily dismissed. First, we live in a world where most people are inundated with a barrage of beauty standards, images, and ideals—ones that are often unattainable since they rely on Photoshop, editing, and filters. We are affected by these images, often negatively, and desperately need self-compassion. Second, I believe the pressure to appear ageless is one manifestation of a much deeper issue—the hate or displeasure of our finite, physical bodies.
But isn’t the beauty, fitness, and wellness culture that promotes youthfulness an indication of our idolization and love of our bodies?
The obsession with our bodies is evident in the booming beauty, anti-aging, fitness, and wellness industries. However, I am convinced these industries rely on our hatred for our bodies. It is well known that the goal of most beauty marketing is to create insecurities about our bodies with the promise that the product advertised will make our lives and bodies better—this is called compensatory consumption—something I am guilty of doing myself. The health and wellness industry walks a narrow knife edge between love and hate for our bodies. We can eat healthy out of a desire to nourish and love our bodies well. Or we use “healthy eating” to punish our body for not fitting beauty or health standards and impose an unrealistic expectation on ourselves and others—something that can lead to disordered eating.
Our bodies are unruly, they refuse to hide the passage of time, they limit us, and they eventually die—all realities that the beauty, wellness, and health industry seek to transcend in some way. My contention is that our culture’s desire to erase the visible process of aging is another way we try to avoid our finite, limited bodies, and, ultimately, our deaths.
The avoidance of our finite bodies and death is exactly why Barth’s affirmation of the goodness of God in our limited existence is shocking. God’s determination of our lives to a unique and limited amount of time is an act of God’s love towards us as a concrete and specific affirmation: “I am and can only be what I am this one time, in the few years of this single life-time… Let us think of the limitation for a moment as the divine willed and chosen determinateness of human existence.”2
Barth argues that our limited or unique time is what gives our lives both meaning and a center. The desire to fight aging at all costs and to transcend the limits of our finite bodies distracts us from finding meaning and purpose in the present. This is precisely why our limited existence is a gift. When I am freed to accept the time I am given as a gift, it allows me to be present and engaged in each moment with my family, friends, church, community, and work.
Our finite existence as those who move from birth to death, as those who age, is exactly what gives our lives purpose—we have a unique and divinely appointed place in the cosmos and history. As Barth writes, “The command of God summons him to be wholly and exclusively the man he can be in this place and this place alone. It thus lifts him out of the stalls and sets him, not behind the stage, but on it, to appear at once and well or badly to say his little piece as appointed.”3
Contrary to what we might think, Barth believes that unlimited time would be detrimental to us by making us indefinite beings.4 Importantly and unsurprisingly, Barth points out that God has willing entered into this very limitation in Jesus Christ.5 God is not above the limitation of our finitude but embraces and takes it into God’s life—what an unfathomable truth of the depths of God’s love and goodness that hallows our little finite lives.
When we live in a world that viciously attacks those who age—a culture that expects the body to resist all signs of time on this earth—Barth’s words seem strange. However, he warns that those who fight the limitation of our finite time on earth are self-deceived: “Those who are not pleased with this limit cannot be pleased with life.”6 My own disappointment about the aging appearance of my face is reflective of this self-deception and lack of pleasure with life.
I do not want to spend my life fighting the gift of the allotted time God has given me. However, this fight is so ingrained in me from a lifetime of beauty standards and cultural pressure that it will take constant vigilance of my thoughts and motives regarding these issues. Is the decision to eat well and exercise born from a desire to love and take care of the body and honor the time God has given to me, or is it from a desire to control and transcend my body? The first step I take whenever I look in the mirror and sigh in disappointment at the lines on my face is to joyfully remember that God has loving liberated me from any need to meet these standards and to thank God for gift of the life and time given to me.
The following statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons indicate a 73% increase in botox procedures from 2019 to 2022. 8,736,591 botox procedures were performed in America in 2022.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. in 13 pts, eds. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956–75), III/4, 571.
Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.4, 579.
Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.4, 572–3.
Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.4, 577.
Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.4, 570.
Wonderful article. We all need help in resisting the call of the culture to these artificial standards. None of the many, many older women I've admired ever did anything dramatic to halt their aging. At 86 I have become rather pleased with my creases and wrinkles (reverse snobbery) and glad I didn't do anything about them.