Pretty privilege, surgery stigma and the cosmetic procedure paradox
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How are cosmetic procedures changing societal beauty standards?
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If you've been on social media at all recently, you might have noticed something unsettling.
We used to be able to differentiate people's ages a little bit more easily, and now it's quite homogenous.
From big-name celebrities to your friends from high school, people are looking increasingly ageless. They're smoother, they're a bit more plump, more perfect. You might have also heard the term Instagram face coined in 2019 to describe the homogenous beauty standards populating our online feeds. Obviously, we've got access to filters and photo editing, but there is something else on the rise too, and that's cosmetic procedures.
And even during times like the pandemic, it was an industry that was not hit. In fact, it actually flourished.
So in a world where we can change our faces and bodies easier than ever, how does this impact the way we think about ourselves and others?
Aging is now almost seen as a medical condition.
What does that mean for our sense of belonging to our heritage, to our families?
Across the board, we found that people who were described as considering having plastic surgery were perceived as less warm, competent, moral and human.
I'm Sana Khadar, and from ABC Radio National, this is All In The Mind, and producer Rose Kerr has this story today, and she joins me in the studio. Hey, Rose. Hi, Sana. Are you chronically online, Rose?
I would like to say no, but I really think that I am. Sometimes things sneak into my algorithm that I never even asked for and cosmetic surgery content is absolutely one of those things. I don't know if it's having recently turned 30 or just what's trendy, but I see endless videos about plastic surgeons describing the types of procedures they do and then celebrities and influencers telling me what they get done. Is this something that you see as well? Oh my gosh, so much.
So much of my Instagram, if I go to the For You page, is yes, those surgeons being like, this person's had this done, that done. But also a lot of like face comparison composite photos, like this person in 2015 versus now. Yeah, there's a lot of it around.
And it can make you feel a bit weird because those faces don't necessarily reflect what we see in the mirror. And I have to admit, the more content like this that I see, the more I've been thinking about how it impacts our mental health, our psychology, how we think about aging, how we see other people, things that I'm excited to say we're going to get into in this episode. But before we get too deep into it, I do want to say there is nothing No moral judgment on whether or not people get these procedures. Full disclosure, I don't have a whole lot of interest in them, but that's mostly because I'm kind of scared of needles.
Yeah, yeah, I'll mimic that. You know, you do you, whatever you've had done, cool. Although we will also talk about body dysmorphia in this episode.
Yeah, there will be some discussions of mental health and mental illness that are related to body image throughout this episode.
And so, Rose, do we know how common cosmetic procedures actually are in Australia?
Like so many things that we talk about on the show, Sana, it is hard to pin down because of limited reporting. But in 2023, the injectables industry was valued at $4.1 billion in Australia. And if we look globally... There are some surveys that have shown that nearly one in four people who get Botox were between the ages of 18 and 34.
So it is a huge and boomy industry.
This is clinical psychologist Gemma Sharp. She's a professor of psychology at Adelaide University who's done research in the body image space.
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