"Are wrinkles to become a thing of the past for the self-selected few, like crooked teeth after the advent of modern orthodontics?" wrote Natasha Singer recently in the New York Times.

"At the very least, wrinkles are being repositioned as the new gray hair - another means to judge attractiveness, romantic viability, professional competitiveness and social status."

According to MediaPostPublications, the word Botox appears in the news every 26 seconds; Restalyne every 24; and Juvederm (a new skin filler just introduced in January), is mentioned every 11 seconds. If you believe everything you read, then everyone is doing it.

But I've got good news for those of you feeling the pressure. Everyone isn't doing it.

Research conducted by Synovate Inc., a market research firm, found that only 1.8 percent of Americans have used Botox or fillers. And almost half of those few who had "used" said that they were unhappy with the results. I fall into that .9% of unhappy former users.

In my late 40s I tried Botox three times, and no one noticed. I went back the last two times because I thought maybe it took a time or two for people to notice how great I was looking.

But guess what? Not a single person ever told me that I looked "refreshed" or "relaxed," let alone younger. I felt like I knew the tree had fallen in the forest, but no one else had heard it; if I'm injecting myself to look younger and nobody notices, why bother?

I also was unprepared for how my face felt after the treatment. Not being able to move my forehead was weird. Instead of feeling more youthful, I felt frozen. But even more importantly, I felt embarrassed for spending that kind of money on something as superficial as trying to erase a few crinkles.

I'm definitely not an all-natural purist, and I'm as vulnerable as the next person to insecurities as I age, but it struck me that I really could put that money to much better use. And it would appear that I'm not alone. According to the research, that kind of embarrassment is why 71 percent of people who use these treatments keep them secret.