Americans spent more than $16.5 billion on cosmetic procedures in 2018, but when Fredric Brandt first opened up shop in the early 1980s, there were few alternatives to going under the knife. Botox, a nerve-freezing substance originally used to alleviate twitchy eyelids, became Brandt’s paintbrush, a way to gently redesign a face by manipulating the muscles under the skin.

What he was able to achieve over the course of his 35-year career wasn’t just a new way to use Botox and fillers—it was a new way to talk to women about what they saw when they looked in the mirror. Fred Brandt took the once-dirty desire to look beautiful and rebranded it as an appropriate and acceptable form of self-care.