18-year-old singer gets Botox to prepare for Glee debut

From time to time I come across random things on the internet that really kind of worry me. This is one of them.

Charice Pempengco, an 18-year-old Filipino singer who recently released her first album, prepared for her debut on the show Glee "by getting Botox and an anti-aging procedure".

Charice's publicist insisted that the Botox procedure was undergone for muscle pain and not for cosmetic purposes, but that seems to be thrown into question when the singer is quoted as saying (emphasis mine):

"All people will be anticipating how will Charice look? Is she good enough to pit against Rachel Berry? So of course there is tremendous pressure," Charice said.

And the cosmetic surgeon who worked on Charice, Vicki Belo, said that the singer underwent a 30-minute procedure to make her round face more narrow. Belo also said (emphasis mine):

"You chew gum and it turns out to be a favorite super-exercise for these muscles, your chewing muscles. So we will show you, this muscle here it's a bit protruding," Belo said as she touched Charice's face. "It's like a ball, so we are going to Botox that in order to get it flat so she will have a cuter face ... we want to give you the apple cheek look because it's cute, right?"

To me, that indicates that while perhaps there was some muscle pain that the singer was dealing with, that beauty was definitely also part of the equation.

Because in Hollywood you're never too young to start suffering for beauty's sake, right?