Just a heads up before we begin this episode. The Baron of Botox deals with difficult topics including depression and suicide.

It is not recommended for young audiences.

Stay tuned to the end of the episode for information on resources for anyone who is suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts.

Let's begin the show. I'm Gene Godfrey June. I'm the Beauty Director at Goop and I've been writing about and editing stories

about beauty first in magazines and now at Goop since the early 90s. Like Linda Wells, Gene Godfrey June remembers the stigma Botox had when

Fred Brant arrived on the New York City beauty scene. It was something like a dark art or voodoo. Hardly the kind of treatment of feel goodery like

Gwyneth Paltrows Goop would be promoting alongside ethically sourced Kashmir and non-toxic

deodorants. Not that feel goodgooderies were exactly the rage back then.

People were talking about Botox.

It had sort of recently come out as a thing.

And people thought, oh, it's going to freeze your whole face and will you get

fossilism and I remember I wrote about it my column I wrote about that experience I

think I would have to dig it up but I emphasize in the thing that, you know, the stuff is the most toxic substance on earth.

People are crazy injecting it into themselves and then, you know, I see the results and I'm like,

wow, it was sort of the beginning of both Botox but also certainly my knowing Dr. Brandt.

Dr. Brandt went over skeptics like Gene was something other than science.

His secret sauce, she says, was the way he connected with his

patients. Really good, certainly in my industry, really good hairdressers, really good makeup

artist, really good dermatologist. I think they take

a lot of whoever their client is, who's sitting in front of them, they take a lot of that person's

energy like in, not to sound too goofy.

Dr. Brandt is a more sort of top hair stylist or something like that where

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