In the past decade or two, as the infamous Kardashian sisters rose to fame, they brought many trends to the internet, leaving young girls aspiring to be like them desperate to achieve the idealized BBL curvy look that the celebrities were pushing out to the media. This led to a drastic rise in plastic surgeries being performed on girls, not because of health-related reasons but because of the enforced beauty standard that made millions of teenagers and young adults around the world feel insecure about themselves.
Author: Zofia Czarnecka
The median age for clients of cosmetic surgery establishments has plummeted in recent years. A study conducted in South Korea in 2020 showed that around 66% of all respondents between the ages of 25 and 29 have admitted to getting plastic surgery. Another study proved that the most common cosmetic surgical procedure was breast augmentation, with 83,000 surgeries performed in the United States alone in 2013. A close second was rhinoplasty, with over 70,000.
However, people are opening their eyes to the horrible consequences of idealizing such invasive and unnecessary procedures. It looks as though the look of faces being overly pumped with Botox is deemed more and more unattractive, pushing forward the ideal of natural beauty. We see influencers getting their lip fillers dissolved, and even Kim Kardashian is rumored to have had reversing surgeries to remove her signature BBL. We’ve seen a cultural pushback against artificial enhancements and a shift to natural faces and body positivity.
Many well-known celebrities have been criticized for not looking like themselves after undergoing drastic facial procedures. For instance, Jennifer Lawrence has lost her signature hooded eyes that added to her character and made her more recognizable in pursuit of objective beauty standards, which left her fans with mixed or negative feelings, describing her as looking “just like any other female celebrity out there.” The same thing can be said about other famous women, such as Lindsey Lohan or Anya Taylor Joy. Many, if not all of them, never needed any surgeries in the first place. They have always been deemed beautiful and fitting to the beauty standards.
In retrospect, we can wonder if cosmetic procedures were a means of pursuing something higher, more ideal, and more beautiful than the beauty standards themselves. Each one of these celebrities strived to stand out and be more attractive than the rest but ended up looking exactly like all the others. The factor that enhanced their individuality and made them all unique has been covered up by layers of Botox and fillers, making them look identical.
Society is finally opening its eyes now, as we have realized that this mania has gone too far. Not being able to make any facial expressions due to implants sitting on one’s forehead is frowned upon. Overly plumped “duck” lips and protruding cheekbones are starting to look fake and simply unattractive. Young girls are discouraged from artificially modifying their faces and bodies, as it raises the unattainable beauty standards of which society has finally had enough.
We shouldn’t expect this to turn into a judgment-free world where everyone is deemed beautiful and unique. Beauty standards have been a part of our society for decades and centuries, and that will not change anytime soon. We can, however, hope for them to be lowered a couple of notches as we finally recognize that one face cannot represent the idea of beauty and that this concept is not linear but more of a tree with several branches, each one representing a subjective opinion, that prevents a single “face of ultimate and objective beauty” from forming. We can achieve this by prioritizing and enabling healthy habits instead of those endangering us in pursuit of achieving impossible goals.
Cover image by: Ri_Ya from Pixabay
Edited by: Ieva Stalauskaite, Johanna Larsson Krausová
