• Business Insider health writer Rachel Hosie struggle to decide whether to get Botox for her wedding.
• She said the decision was made harder by the rise of "undetectable" beauty treatments.
• People increasingly look inexplicably ageless, setting what she sees as even less attainable beauty standards.

Getting engaged a year ago was one of the most special and exciting moments of my life.

But wedding planning has come with some tricky decisions: Should I change my name? Is "Mr Brightside" an acceptable first dance song? And should I get Botox for the first time?

I've changed my mind endlessly: perhaps I'll get just a little something to smooth out the lines that, as a 32-year-old woman, have appeared on my forehead in recent years. "No, actually, I won't," I think.

For every sister-in-law warning against the "weird, shiny texture" Botox can give skin, a gym-mate encourages me to do it because I "won't look back."

I worry that Botox will become yet another expense alongside the mani-pedis, hair coloring, and waxing that are quietly expected of women to live up to patriarchal beauty standards, but my feminist principles are what are really causing me to hesitate.

While some men increasingly feel the pressure to look young, the scrutiny women — particularly those in the public eye — face is unrivaled. By erasing those signs of life, would I be part of the problem in a society that, as Anne-Mette Hermans, who studies the sociology of cosmetic procedures, told me, puts on women "a penalty on looking older"?

Deciding whether to get antiaging treatments like Botox isn't a new problem. Still, it feels harder to avoid as aesthetic treatments and surgeries become more subtle and less detectable and, in turn, make everyone look inexplicably ageless — setting even less attainable beauty standards.

I know that women are valued for looking young

Christine Hall, an aesthetic doctor at London's Taktouk Clinic, told me that since the COVID pandemic, skincare has replaced makeup as the aesthetic focus for many women and girls. This reflects a shift from the heavily made-up look of the mid-2010s — with many celebrities revealing they've had filler removed — toward looking "natural" and effortless.

Of course, by "natural," we mean young.

I've never worn a lot of makeup and am happy to go out and about bare-faced, so I was pleased that societal expectations changed. But the focus shifting from makeup to antiaging just as my first wrinkles appeared made me feel uneasy.

Antiaging has been big business for centuries, as Western cultures traditionally value women for beauty and fertility, which are seen as synonymous with youth. These ideals followed women when they entered the workforce in greater numbers.

"A beautiful appearance, especially for women, can definitely lead to advantages on the relationship market, but also in terms of jobs, in terms of promotions, in terms of so many different things," Hermans, an assistant professor studying cosmetic procedures at the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, said.

Psychologists point to a phenomenon called the "halo effect," where people unconsciously assume an attractive person has positive traits, such as trustworthiness and intelligence. A 2021 study from researchers at the University of Buffalo found that people perceived as attractive "are more likely to get hired, receive better evaluations, and get paid more."

So wanting to cling to our youth makes sense, and I don't shame anyone for having treatments like Botox.

After the FDA approved Botox for cosmetic use in 2002, Gen X started the trend of facial "tweakments" in earnest. It was taken to new heights by millennials amid the rise of social media and filters that made them appear wrinkle-free. The Kardashian-esque "Instagram face" quickly became ubiquitous.

Now, increasing numbers of Gen Zers are getting "baby Botox" in their 20s in the hope of preventing wrinkles. (Some practitioners, however, won't administer Botox to line-free faces as it can actually make people look older and, if done incorrectly, lead to muscle atrophy and sagging).

While the US has tighter regulations around cosmetic treatments than some countries, it's remarkably easy in the UK, where I'm from, to find someone who will administer Botox — whether at a "home salon" or your dentist.

"The idea of tweaking things in your own body and especially the face, it's become far, far more normalized," Hermans said.

Gen Alpha, children born after 2010, is seemingly set to continue down the same path, with the emergence of "Sephora kids" who are as young as 10 and save their pocket money to buy expensive antiaging products they don't need.

"When I was 16 or 17, it was all about blue eyeshadow and putting on as much foundation as possible. And now obviously the trend is kids wanting Drunk Elephant products and acids on their skin," Hall told me.

Commenting more widely on beauty trends, Hall added: "Nobody wants to wear makeup. Everyone wants to have natural, glowing skin." At the same time, aesthetic treatments are "much more acceptable now," she said.

This combination has in part ushered in what's dubbed the "undetectable" era of beauty. In recent months, the faces of Lindsay Lohan, 38, and Christina Aguilera, 44, have been the subjects of online fascination because they suddenly looked dramatically younger without the tell-tale signs of cosmetic treatments.

For the average person who doesn't have the same resources as celebrities, this presents a paradox between wanting the result of treatments to look natural while also making enough of a difference to justify the price tag.

Earlier this year, I tried what I had hoped would be the holy grail of antiaging treatments: "microtox," for a hefty cost of £495 ($657).

Popular in Korea but relatively new in the West, diluted Botox is injected into the skin's surface rather than muscles, preventing a frozen-looking face.

I hoped my skin would be wrinkle-free while maintaining all movement and expression. While my skin glowed, the effect on my fine lines was negligible and wore off over a couple of months.

So, when I look at photos of myself in the run-up to my wedding and wince at my forehead lines, I think, sure, Botox may be contributing to low self-esteem among women, but we can't change the world overnight.

If everyone else is giving in and walking around with shiny, smooth foreheads, maybe I should, too?

I want to look like myself at my wedding

It's now less than six months until my wedding, and considering most people get Botox every three to six months, I've nearly run out of time to do a trial run.

Hermans told me that a big predictor of whether someone will get any kind of aesthetic treatment is whether those in their social circle have done so. None of my close friends have had Botox — yet.

For now, I've decided not to get Botox.

While I may have crinkles and lines on my face, I also know who I am, which I was still working out a decade ago. My face looks like me, lines included. Just as my muscle definition reflects my love of strength training, my forehead lines reflect that I've embraced life.

I still have moments where I catch my reflection in harsh lighting or an action shot photo and don't like what I see. But perhaps reframing how I think about my looks is the answer, not Botox. After all, trying to "fix" everything you dislike about your appearance is an expensive path to go down.

When I'm smiling at my new husband on our wedding day, I want him and everyone else to be able to see my joy — forehead wrinkles and all.

• Microsoft holds quarterly earnings calls to discuss the company's financial performance.
• In 2024, earnings calls touched on topics like the Activision Blizzard acquisition, AI, and layoffs.
• Here's what to know about Microsoft's revenues, profits, and more.

Information about Microsoft's earnings is released publicly at the end of each quarter of the fiscal year. For Microsoft, this is done during an earnings call usually hosted by CEO Satya Nadella.

An earnings call consists of company executives laying out the current state of the company's financial situation and explaining how the company performed over the course of the closing quarter. It also involves projections about upcoming fiscal performance. These calls are closely watched by investors, economists, and regulators.

In 2024, some of the major themes on these earnings calls were the advancement of AI tools like Copilot, which was first launched in late 2023, and layoffs at Microsoft, largely in the company's gaming division.

Microsoft Q1 earnings 2025

Things were going well for Microsoft as of the October 2024 earnings call which covered the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year calendar. Revenues were just over $65.6 billion, a 16% increase year-over-year.

Among the specifics discussed were a 10% increase in revenue for LinkedIn and a 61% increase in revenues for Xbox "content and services."

The company reportedly returned $9 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. On October 30, Microsoft's stock price was trading at around $432 per share.

Microsoft Q4 earnings 2024

The July 2024 earnings call was mostly filled with good news. Amy Hood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft reported that the quarterly revenue was $64.7 billion, which was up 15% over the previous quarter.

Hood also reported that share prices were up $2.95 over the previous quarter. (On July 30, 2024, Microsoft share prices were at $4.22.92 per share at the close of the market.) Q4 was the best quarter of the fiscal year for Microsoft.

Not all the news was good, though: revenues for Xbox video game console hardware fell by 42%, and this drop surely helped account for large round of layoffs in Microsoft's gaming division.

Microsoft Q3 earnings 2024

Microsoft's revenues for the third quarter of the 2024 fiscal year were almost as strong as those of the fourth quarter. In April 2024, the company reported overall revenues of $61.9 billion for the months of January, February, and March of that year, a 17% year-over-year increase.

Revenues increased for platforms like LinkedIn and software suites like Office 365, but decreased for some physical device sales. Share prices increased by $2.94 on average. And Xbox "content and services revenue" increased by 62%, this increase coming only a few months after Microsoft's acquisition of the gaming company Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft Q2 earnings 2024

In the months of October, November, and December of 2023, the second quarter of the 2024 fiscal year, revenue was almost the same as the following Q3. Q2 revenues were $62 billion, a 18% YOY increase.

The massive acquisition of Activision Blizzard concluded during the early days of this quarter, with the software company laying out $69 billion to acquire the gaming company. And artificial intelligence was top-of-mind for Nadella, who said in the earnings call that "we've moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale. By infusing AI across every layer of our tech stack, we're winning new customers and helping drive new benefits and productivity gains across every sector."

Microsoft earnings history

Like most major tech companies, Microsoft spent 2024 adjusting to the post-pandemic slump in what some are calling a tech industry recession.

At the same time, a fiercely competitive AI arms race has proven challenging, even with Microsoft's 2023 launch of Copilot.

In 2020, the peak year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft's annual revenues were $143 billion. 2021 saw an increase to $168 billion, while 2022 saw another jump to $198 billion in revenues. In 2023, Microsoft revenues were $211 billion, and when you add all those quarters of FY24 up, you'll see its 2024 fiscal year revenues were a healthy $245 billion.

• Experts told BI the explosives detonated in an apparent attack outside a Trump hotel didn't appear sophisticated.
• One explosives expert said the incident, where the driver was an active-duty Army service member, appeared "poorly executed."
• Authorities said the explosives were "not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience."

Explosive experts told Business Insider the damage from the materials detonated inside a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas would likely have been worse if the items used had been more sophisticated.

The explosive-laden Cybertruck, which authorities say carried gasoline tanks, camping fuel, and large firework mortars, injured at least seven people. The driver, an active-duty Army service member named Matthew Alan Livelsberger, shot himself moments before the explosives detonated on Wednesday, authorities said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to social media in the wake of the incident to praise the Cybertruck's design and suggest it helped limit the damage of the explosion.

Nick Glumac, a mechanical science and engineering professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told BI that the volume of the explosion was likely due to the types of explosives used. Glumac said this was a "poorly executed" incident if the intent was to cause major damage.

"It would be very difficult to get the types of fuels here to make into a large scale destruction kind of event," Glumac said.

Glumac said similar improvised explosive device blasts look very different from what occurred on January 1. He also pointed to the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, when Army veteran Timothy McVeigh detonated an explosive-laden rental truck that killed 168 people and reduced a third of the federal building to rubble.

"That was very carefully planned. They knew what they were doing," Glumac said about the Oklahoma City Bombing, adding that the Cybertruck explosion on January 1, by contrast, appeared "very improvised."

'The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience'

Car and truck bombs were a key feature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to which the suspect deployed at least three times. In many of those instances, vehicles were packed with enough explosives to blast fortified positions or take down buildings. The war in Ukraine has similarly suggested that heavily armored vehicles and tanks can be used as rolling car bombs.

Officials spoke about the explosive materials used in the incident during a Thursday press conference.

"The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience," Kenny Cooper, an assistant special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said at a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police press conference, adding that most of the materials in the vehicle were to "help fuel a greater explosion."

Ali Rangwala, a fire protection engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said that the driver may have miscalculated the explosion, and it might not have been released instantaneously.

"Some of the explosives might not have triggered on time systematically," Rangwala said.

"The only way to create an instantaneous energy release, as in the case of a bomb, is for all of the energetic material to ignite in micro- or milli-seconds," Jim Wesevich, a global service line leader of forensics at safety and security firm Jensen Hughes, told BI in written commentary.

A military official told BI that Livelsberger "wasn't a bomb maker." But his military occupational specialty (MOS) within the 10th Special Forces Group was 18Z, making him a special forces operations sergeant, which the Army says, "trains and maintains proficiency in all major duties associated with Special Forces."

Cooper said it was too early to know if there was "sophisticated connectivity" to the components or to "give any determination" as to how the explosion was initiated. Officials said they discovered consumer fireworks, mortars, aerial shells, fuel enhancers, and explosive targets that Cooper said could be purchased at "any sporting goods store."

Experts say a vehicle's design may shape the trajectory of a blast

Elon Musk, in a social media post Wednesday, called the Cybertruck the "worst possible choice for a car bomb, as its stainless steel armor will contain the blast better than any other commercial vehicle."

Kevin McMahill, sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said the Cybertruck's design helped limit the explosion.

"The fact that this was a Cybertruck really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet because it had most of the blast go up and through the truck and out," McMahill said in a briefing.

Rangwala said the damage may have been partly limited because a Cybertruck's roof, which includes a large glass pane, would clear pressure from inside the vehicle early in the explosion. The pressure from an explosion would be felt on all sides equally if it wasn't relieved by going upward through the roof, he said.

Glumac and Brian Meacham, an engineer and director of risk and regulatory consulting at Crux Consulting LLC who spoke to BI over email, said that they would have expected similar scenarios if the incident took place in a traditional pickup truck.

Michael Villahermosa, a US Army commander with a background in explosive ordnance disposal, said on X that photos of the items used in the blast suggest the explosives were "poorly constructed and poorly thought out."

As he said on X, "People are using the Las Vegas bombing to show the quality of the Cybertruck," when, in his view, "it shows the quality of the explosive device that was used."

Staff writer Ryan Pickrell contributed to this report.

The State Department has notified Congress "informally" of an $8 billion proposed arms deal with Israel that will include munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells, two sources with direct knowledge tell Axios.

Why it matters: This will likely be the last weapons sale to Israel the Biden administration approves.

• It comes amid claims from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters in recent months that Biden had imposed a silent "arms embargo" on Israel.
• Some Democrats pushed the administration to condition arms sales to Israel based on Israel's handling of the war effort and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, but Biden declined to do so.
• This is a long-term agreement, according to the sources. Some production and delivery of the munitions can be fulfilled through current U.S. stocks, but the majority will take one or more years to deliver.

Zoom in: The sources said the arms sale — which needs approval from the House and Senate foreign relations committees — includes AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles for fighter jets to defend against airborne threats, including drones.

• The sale also includes 155mm artillery shells and Hellfire AGM-114 missiles for attack helicopters.
• The proposed deal also includes small diameter bombs, JDAM tail kits that turn "dumb bombs" to precision munitions, 500-lb warheads and bomb fuzes.

What they're saying: One source familiar with the arms sale said the State Department told Congress the deal is aimed at "supporting Israel's long-term security by resupplying stocks of critical munitions and air defense capabilities."

• "The President has made clear Israel has a right to defend its citizens, consistent with international law and international humanitarian law, and to deter aggression from Iran and its proxy organizations. We will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel's defense," a U.S. official said.

• A fire devasted one of the world's largest secondhand clothing markets in Accra, Ghana.
• Kantamanto Market receives 15 million garments weekly and employs some 30,000 people.
• An advocacy group urged the global fashion industry to provide relief.

A fire devastated one of the world's largest secondhand clothes markets in Accra, Ghana.

The blaze started Thursday and destroyed as much as two-thirds of Kantamanto Market, which employs about 30,000 clothing traders and receives some 15 million garments weekly from wealthy countries like the US, the UK, and China.

Thousands of people lost their stalls. Ghana National Fire Service said the fire was fully extinguished, and no injuries or fatalities were reported. They are still investigating the cause of the fire.

Now, clean-up efforts are underway, and advocacy groups are calling on the global fashion industry to help provide relief.

"This is a critical moment for the global fashion ecosystem to show solidarity, not just by recognizing the value of secondhand markets, but by providing tangible help to rebuild and sustain them," Daniel Mawuli Quist, creative director of The Or Foundation, said in a statement.

The fire calls attention to the global fashion industry's lack of alternatives for waste handling.

Workers in Kantamanto Market resell and remanufacture millions of garments. But the rise of fast fashion has overwhelmed Accra with textile waste piling up in gutters, landfills, and beaches. An estimated 40% of garments go unsold, The Or Foundation found. The nonprofit in Ghana conducts research and offers grants and job training to workers in Kantamanto Market.

The Or Foundation pledged $1 million to relief efforts and set up a fund to raise money for rebuilding the market and providing financial assistance to vendors.

Kantamanto Market before the fire

Up to two-thirds of the market was destroyed

The fire was extinguished on Thursday

The aisles of Kantamanto Market before the fire

Thousands of people have lost their stalls

Metal scrap dealers are going through the rubble now that cleanup efforts are underway