A step through the door revealed a gathering with uncorked bottles of red and white wine, clear plastic cups, a vase of flowers and chips and dip. The spread sat a few feet from a check-in window with clipboards and across from metal and plastic waiting room chairs lined against the wall.
Three women were seated in the row. One filled out forms, another scrolled through a cellphone and all quietly waited for … what? An interview? A time share presentation?
Out walked Shannon Campbell, 40. She appraised Kristi Elfrank of St. Peters, Mo. “Oh, yeah,” Campbell said brightly, “you’re due.”
It was a Tuesday in early March and time for another after-hours Botox party for Campbell’s employer, Dr. Raffi Krikorian, a cardiologist based out of Missouri Baptist Medical Center and owner of New Look Vein and Aesthetic Center in St. Louis, Mo.
Injectable cosmetic treatments have long been in the faces and mindsets of wealthy women of a certain age and Hollywood celebrities. But now middle-class women even in their 20s are spending hundreds at a sitting to take away the rough edges of aging.
Why the greater appeal? Vanity, for sure. But part of the answer dates back long before the Kardashians and the “Housewives of Beverly Hills.” Think Tupperware. Mary Kay. Pampered Chef. All highly successful brands sold through gatherings where the hostess gets free stuff in return for drumming up orders from her friends.
Now Botox has joined the party.
Campbell, an esthetician who has teamed with Krikorian to organize 15 parties so far, was expecting as many as a dozen clients that night. They had been formally invited by Connie Nash of St. Peters. She was the party’s hostess and Elfrank’s mother.
“Ladies, glass of wine?” Campbell asked.
“Yeah, love it,” Nash said.
“Are you white or red?”
A receptionist cued up Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Pink, Katie Perry and Fun, and music pulsed through the office.
More women arrived. They poured more wine. Talk flowed: crows’ feet, flat lips, stress brows, smokers lines and “elevens” — vertical lines that furrow between the eyebrows.
It wouldn’t be long before Krikorian and his physician’s assistant, Irakli Shengelia, had lined up Elfrank and six other paying customers: $330 apiece for 40 units of Botox to smooth wrinkles and an additional $575 for the three women who got Artefill, an enduring filler used primarily to plump lips.
Look on Craigslist, type “Botox” in the search engine and chances are you’ll find ads for parties.
Critics include a board member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, who said wine and medical procedures shouldn’t mix. Plastic surgeon Suzan Obagi said the academy discouraged the parties, which happen just about everywhere: cruise ships, hair salons, homes, hotel-casinos.
Obagi urges patients to get treatment only in a clinical setting. And alcohol — which even tattoo parlors can’t serve — should always be shunned.
LAX REGULATIONS
Obagi has seen one person disfigured by bad Botox injections given on a cruise ship. Dr. Gregory Branham, a facial plastic surgeon at Washington University School of Medicine, said he had seen lumps and other complications. One patient had no idea who even administered her Botox at a party, he said. Peer pressure is his big worry.
“How do you make somebody feel totally comfortable saying ‘no’ as everyone else is doing it?” he said.
Regulations vary nationwide on who can administer Botox and filler, and critics argue that standards are lax.
In Krikorian’s practice, he injects the fillers and he or his physician assistant does the Botox. Patients get touch-ups in a follow-up visit. He said he was conservative in treatment and balanced the patient’s ability to make sound decisions with creating “a level of excitement or pleasure.”
“Part of the benefit of the relaxed party atmosphere is there’s less pain and less negative experiences,” he said.
Campbell said Botox parties were widely discussed in skin care school as a way to build up a full skin and beauty practice. People who attend the parties often come back for other cosmetic treatments, such as facial peels and laser skin tightening, even weight loss management. She has even arranged a party for hockey moms.
“They all came in and got their first Botox, and now we have two coming in and getting filler. They wouldn’t have been comfortable to do that if they all hadn’t come together to the party,” she said.
Nash invited work colleagues, her daughters and their friends.
“I just sent out a text, ‘Hey I’m having a Botox party. Only $7.50 a unit,’” she said.
TERRIFIED OF NEEDLES
Customers typically purchase between 30 and 50 units of Botox per treatment at more than a 50 percent discount. In exchange for bringing at least five women to the party, Nash would get a Botox treatment for free.
“Whatever he’ll stick in me, then I’m going to take it,” she said gamely.
Wine in hand, Nash stood in a treatment room with Elfrank and her sister, Lisa DeNoyer. Another woman named Dee, who would not give her full name, was there to observe. She was skeptical.
DeNoyer, recumbent in a treatment chair, waited for the white numbing cream on her face to kick in before Artefill injections would plump her lips. DeNoyer described her lips as flat and lined — the same as her sister’s. They wanted “pouty.”
DeNoyer was terrified of needles. She had already taken a Xanax.
Krikorian arrived. He and DeNoyer talked about goals: sexiness, fullness and definition in the ridges between her nose and upper lip. In the background, Ke$ha sang, “It’s going down, I’m yelling timber.”
Campbell dumped two orange stress balls in DeNoyer’s lap. But DeNoyer planned to squeeze her mother’s hand.
“Do I need to hold the wine so you can hold her hand?” Dee said to Nash.
Krikorian injected a painkiller just beneath the skin. Then Campbell held a wand massager on top of DeNoyer’s head “to distract the brain.”
“Take a deep breath,” the doctor said as, his hands blue-gloved, he took a 1¼-inch needle called a cannula and pushed it through the soft tissue on the side of DeNoyer’s face near her lips. He pushed slowly, and worked the needle flatly behind the facial muscles over to the top lip.
DeNoyer lay seemingly comatose in the chair, eyes closed and slack-jawed. But her mother grimaced. DeNoyer was crushing her hand.
DeNoyer got six injections in all. When done, she sat up and blinked. She was given a hand mirror. Her fuller lips turned up into a modest smile.
“You got a lip!” Elfrank told her sister.
DeNoyer returned to the waiting room holding tiny square ice packs to her face. Partygoers encircled her.
“Awww,” one said. “It looks soooo good!” another agreed.
Campbell gave DeNoyer a high-five. The sisters mock-kissed their enhanced lips. And Dee quietly slipped back to a treatment room to get her lips injected with the filler.
The party went on. In his white lab coat, the physician assistant located a missing corkscrew and opened another bottle.
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