Rose Kerr

But why is that the case?

What is driving individual people to seek out these surgeries and treatments?

As you can probably imagine, the motivations are hugely varied and personal.

But Gemma says there are a few common themes that pop up.

Other reasons might include wanting to improve self-confidence or to overcome physical discomfort.

And when it comes to personality traits and cosmetic procedures, Gemma says there needs to be more research to properly understand the relationship between the two.

Do we know from research if being attractive actually does improve your life?

This is thought to be in part due to the halo effect.

The halo effect is a cognitive bias where one positive aspect of a person influences your whole picture of them.

For example, if you like someone, you might assume they are more competent at their job than they are.

That is horrifying to hear, but also like pretty validating.

And it does kind of make you go, this is the world we live in and it's rooted in our evolution.

Like, it's kind of fair enough that people would go, well, this is what I got to do.

Part of Gemma's clinical work is seeing patients before they go ahead with a cosmetic procedure.

Through this work, she comes across a lot of different reasons why someone is seeking a particular treatment.

Do you remember what he ended up deciding to do?

I just want to pause here and talk about men and cosmetic surgery, because it's a topic that doesn't come up as often as it does for women.

Although generally motivations for surgery do cross over a lot between men and women, there seems to be a difference in the way men talk about it.

And Gemma's noticed that the types of surgeries men seek out are expanding.

I imagine it's shaped by social media similarly to women.