Dr. Sarah Burnell

almost seen as a medical condition in the sense that it's no longer, I guess, appropriate to look old.

We almost see it as a signifier of someone not taking care of themselves if they've aged to a certain degree.

Now, I think the paradox exists in older people as well.

Like we want, society wants to see older people looking older.

And if people, you know, take a facelift to the extreme or whatever it might be, and they look far younger than they are, I think there's a lot of sort of stigma associated with that.

And we sort of see that with celebrities and with everyday people.

Oh, I mean, I think ultimately it's creating more of a divide.

And obviously there are a lot of people who fall into the grey area, but you kind of have your pro-procedure, anti-procedure camps.

I also think, obviously, cosmetic procedures are creating body image issues, broadly speaking.

Like, as beautification becomes more available within a society, people are going to be focusing more on beauty.

which is maybe the more obvious answer.

But then interestingly, and I don't know how to frame this, but I think there's been almost a nice silver lining, which has been, like, with the rise of these cosmetic procedures, there's almost a resistance and a movement that's now celebrating something as simple as, you know, my wrinkles represent all of the experiences I've had in life and, like, my...

body is a roadmap of where I've been and what's happened to me.

I don't love when it then veers into stigma towards people who do have cosmetic procedures but the celebration of the I guess natural aging process so to speak is quite nice to see.

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