The plastic surgery business is booming. But with buccal fat removal, BBLs, veneers and Ozempic all clogging up tiktok feeds, people are finding it hard to keep up with the latest trends – and the result is more people than ever making body modifications that they regret but that are impossible to reverse. Here’s our take on plastic surgery regrets, the pressure to permanently modify in chasing fleeting trends, and whether you can create a culture that allows people the freedom to choose what they do with their body, without making them anxious about the body they’ve been born with.
TRANSCRIPT
The plastic surgery business is booming. But with buccal fat removal, BBLs, veneers and Ozempic all clogging up tiktok feeds, people are finding it hard to keep up with the latest trends – and the result is more people than ever making body modifications that they regret but that are impossible to reverse.
Gary Linkov: You can’t put filler or fat deep into that compartment where you removed the buccal fat… it’s never gonna look quite the same. - Dr. Gary Linkov: City Facial Plastics/YouTube
If we look at just the last two decades, beauty trends in women have ranged wildly from the ultra-skinny models of the 00s, to the fuller-figured Kardashian-esque models of the 10s, and now back toward an updated ‘heroin chic.’ But if you got a procedure to make your face look like Kylie Jenner’s in the 2010s, or are doing that to look like Bella Hadid’s now, these aren’t necessarily steps that can be undone. Even celebrities can’t always completely reverse their past decisions, and they have the luxury of being able to access the best surgeons, while ordinary people aren’t so lucky.
Here’s our take on plastic surgery regrets, the pressure to permanently modify in chasing fleeting trends, and whether you can create a culture that allows people the freedom to choose what they do with their body, without making them anxious about the body they’ve been born with.
Surgery runs in trends. And right now, ever since Chrissy Teigen got buccal fat removal in September 2021, everyone from Lea Michele to Zoe Kravitz have got the same thing done, with the #buccalfatremoval hashtag exploding on socials. But surgeons are already warning that it’s a permanent response to what might be a temporary aesthetic trend. Dermatologist Elyse Love says, “Five years from now, we may find that dermal fillers have become popular to correct previous buccal fat pad augmentation.” But buccal fat doesn’t come back once it’s been removed, and while the initial effect is to accentuate cheekbones, long term it could cause the face to look gaunt and hollow, and have an artificial premature aging effect.
All those young girls who are permanently removing fat from their face are going to look like skeletons in a few years, you just wait. - @blume_injectors/TikTok
While buccal fat removal is focused on a thinner look, other recent cosmetic trends have been about creating a fuller figure. Back before the pandemic, the Brazilian Butt Lift, or BBL, was the procedure du jour. Celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj and Jennifer Lopez had helped create this curvaceous ideal body image, and such was the popularity of the procedure that the American Association of Plastic Surgeons were forced to put out a pretty serious warning in 2018, revealing the mortality rate was 1 in 3,000, far higher than any other cosmetic surgery.
Overall, the huge pressure to get these surgeries has created a wider market, which is being filled with people aggressively marketing the need for them and offering the procedures at a lower rate. Veneers have also become big business in recent years, but more and more people are expressing their regrets at changing their smiles for a cut price. RnB singer Kehlani addressed her TikTok to say that her cheap veneers were a pain for three years, before she was able to get them redone at a higher cost.
Kehlani: I really want y’all to stop traveling and getting these bad resin veneers. - @kehlani/TikTok
While on the one hand we can celebrate the increased accessibility of procedures and the freedom of choice people now have to augment their bodies however they see fit, on the other, it’s worth asking whether the kind of culture that creates this market is a healthy one? Recently the diabetes drug Ozempic has been in the news having been prescribed as a weight loss hack, but people soon realized that this quick, drastic weight loss causes the face to sag, and again, makes you look a lot older.
Underpinning all of this is a desire to fit a particular beauty standard, and pop culture or commercial influences that make us feel we must conform to it. It’s increasingly a problem for men as well, but the industry is especially female dominated because of the huge pressure placed on women to look a certain way. And when that certain way is always in flux, it’s fighting a losing battle.
When you change your body, you change more than just the aesthetic. You’re changing a part of yourself, and that might be the biggest regret of all. Bella Hadid famously had rhinoplasty at a young age because of insecurities around the size of her nose, but has recently come out and spoken about how her original nose reminded her of her familial heritage. She said: “I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors. I think I would have grown into it.” — her words refer as much to psychological growth as physical growth.
Bella Hadid: I used to feel like no make up in the world could make me feel good about myself. - @bellahadid/Instagram
Courtney Cox also famously got a lot of cosmetic surgery as she got older, but then reversed many of the procedures in what many viewed as an attempt to look “more like herself.” UK influencer Molly Mae echoed the same sentiments after getting her lip fillers dissolved. We see how these cosmetic procedures become a solution to low self esteem, but that also they create a sense of self that is somehow artificial, and maybe over time even harder to live with.
Molly Mae: I’m really going through a bit of a journey at the moment, toning things down to feel a lot more natural. - MollyMae/YouTube
It’s no surprise that people are having this conflicted sense of self, given that what’s inspiring so many people to get surgery is a pursuit of a face that literally doesn’t exist. The Guardian’s Elle Hunt talks about the rise of “selfie dysmorphia” brought on by facetune and photo filters that distort what you actually look like into something glowing and flawless. She reveals that in 2017, 55% of cosmetic surgeons said patients’ motivation was to look better in selfies — up from 13% the previous year. At the same time, there is still a level of societal taboo around cosmetic surgery, to the point where people who get it done to hide their perceived flaws are trolled specifically for their new, fake look. So while you may have solved one problem, you’ve potentially created a lot more.
Bill Burr: Why would you get a facelift? Can’t you look at other facelifts and realize they haven’t worked all the bugs out yet. - You People Are All The Same
And really this comes down to your sense of self, which is something that is never fixed. In Grey’s Anatomy, Robert Fischer comes into the hospital having had extreme facial modifications to look like a cat, and while admitting it did have some advantages, ultimately it’s a decision he comes to regret, because the person it turned him into — the life it made him live — isn’t the one he wanted. The ease and speed with which we can make these modifications on social media has maybe made us think they’re less drastic than they actually are. In reality, we can see how they’re not decisions to be taken lightly.
All surgeries come with risks, that’s a given. The problem with cosmetic surgery is that those risks seem to be increasing. In 2022, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons warned that there had been a 44% rise in botched cosmetic surgeries coming from abroad, citing the so-called “zoom boom” — increased awareness of one’s own face brought on by increased screen time during the pandemic — as a contributing factor. A previous investigation from The Guardian also showed just how many deaths were occurring from people traveling to get surgeries in the Dominican Republic.
So we see the problems aren’t just that surgeries are irreversible, it’s that some practitioners are advertising a higher standard than what they can actually deliver. Celebrities can afford the best surgeons, the best procedures, the best aftercare, and have the money to either top surgeries up over time, or reverse many of them when they grow tired of their new look. But this simply isn’t accessible to the average consumer.
It’s easy to say the solution to this is for people to try and look deeper in themselves to find that happiness that they’re maybe chasing with procedures, but that ignores how the culture around cosmetic surgery needs to change — to let people know that it’s not as simple as hitting a filter on your phone, and if you don’t like it, you might just have to live with it anyway.
Cosmetic surgery can be important and affirming. In cases of body dysmorphia, it’s an essential tool. But it’s something that requires real consideration. Kelly Rowland famously said she waited ten years between wanting to get breast implants, and actually getting them, to make sure she really wanted them.
Kelly Rowland: Now it’s very much an open space for people to be more vulnerable. - Beautycon/YouTube
However, if it’s just chasing a trend, then you may end up creating a dysmorphia that wasn’t there in the first place. It’s great we have the choice to do these things, but just because we do, doesn’t mean the choice isn’t a big one, and one that we should really think about, before jumping straight in.
SOURCES
“BAAPS Call for Action as Audit Reveals 44% Rise in Botched Cosmetic Surgery from Abroad.” British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, 19 Apr. 2022 https://baaps.org.uk/about/news/1859/baaps_call_for_action_as_audit_reveals_44_rise_in_botched_cosmetic_surgery_from_abroad/
“‘Beyoncé‘s mom told me to really think about it’: Kelly Rowland reveals she waited 10 years to get boob job on advice of her bandmate’s mother.” Daily Mail, 27 Sep. 2013 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2434389/Kelly-Rowland-waited-10-years-boob-job-advice-Beyonces-mother-Tina-Knowles.html
Harrington, Jessica. “You May Regret Getting the Buccal Fat Removal Procedure Later.” Pop Sugar, 8 Feb. 2023 https://www.popsugar.co.uk/beauty/buccal-fat-removal-controversy-regrets-49083649?utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=US:GB&utm_source=www.google.com
Hunt, Elle. “Faking it: how selfie dysmorphia is driving people to seek surgery.” The Guardian, 23 Jan. 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/23/faking-it-how-selfie-dysmorphia-is-driving-people-to-seek-surgery
Kobeszko, Stacy. “Plastic Surgery Societies Issue Urgent Warning About the Risks Associated with Brazilian Butt Lifts.” American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 6 Aug. 2018 https://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/press-releases/plastic-surgery-societies-issue-urgent-warning-about-the-risks-associated-with-brazilian-butt-lifts
Kolirin, LIanne. “Supermodel Bella Hadid regrets having cosmetic surgery.” CNN, 16 Mar. 2022 https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/bella-hadid-cosmetic-surgery-vogue-intl
Krumholz, Michael and Ciriaco, Noelis. “Dying for a new body: why so many deaths from plastic surgery tourism?” The Guardian, 23 Aug. 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/23/americans-plastic-surgery-dominican-republic
Lopez, Quispe. “Kehlani said they got cheap composite veneers and regrets them. Here’s what you should know about the procedure.” Insider, 28 Jun. 2021 https://www.insider.com/kehlani-said-they-got-cheap-omposite-veneers-and-regrets-procedure-2021-6]
Ryu, Jenna. “Celebrities often deny, keep quiet about their plastic surgery. Why that’s problematic.” USA Today, 17 Dec. 2021 https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2021/12/17/celebrities-lie-plastic-surgery-lip-fillers-why-its-problem/6503278001/