Professor Gemma Sharp

We used to be able to differentiate people's ages a little bit more easily, and now it's quite homogenous.

And even during times like the pandemic, it was an industry that was not hit.

In fact, it actually flourished.

What does that mean for our sense of belonging to our heritage, to our families?

So it is a huge and boomy industry.

Surgery has always been pretty popular, but it's not growing as much as injectables are.

people were always interested in cosmetic procedures.

I think what social media has done is made it seem very accessible through marketing, whether that be an influencer talking about what they've had done and they feel like it's benefited them, but also direct marketing, which we all know happens on social media.

I think there's a couple of pathways there.

I think it's really normalized getting procedures done.

People might think that people who seek cosmetic procedures have poor body image in general, but that's not the case.

The body image distress is usually very focused on the area that they want to change.

So thinking of people who have always thought their nose is too big, people may have teased them throughout their lives.

People will talk about relationship concerns as well.

We've always found that if anyone tries to publish a profile, the next study kind of refutes it.

What we do know is that the person usually has a body image concern.

Sometimes we do see people who are a bit more perfectionistic and people who maybe they value their appearance more than the norm.

And we often get people saying that it will help them in life, help them get jobs, help them get partners, those kinds of things.

So that appearance value is linking into other parts of their lives.

The pretty privilege question.