From TikTok facelifts to ‘baby Botox’, cosmetic fixes are booming. What’s driving the quest for perfection, asks Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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An age-old industry, a new face
Devoting a Bulletin to cosmetic procedures might seem a bit left-field, but with Alex Casey’s cover story on Botox leading The Spinoff this morning, it’s the perfect chance to take stock of how – and why – so many New Zealanders are choosing to change their faces. From a few discreet units of “baby Botox” to the full ordeal of a surgical lift, cosmetic medicine is broader and more accessible than ever. Just look at the global fascination with Kris Jenner’s new face, or the TikTok shockwaves caused by Michelle Wood, the American woman who recently went to Mexico for a frankly incredible face lift that cost her just US$14,000 (NZ$23,000).
It’s no wonder “cosmetic tourism” is booming, with places like Thailand luring New Zealanders seeking cheaper fixes than they can get at home. But as plastic surgeon Chris Adams told The Project in 2023, bargain shopping for your face comes with serious risks. “I have seen patients who’ve come back, who’ve had much greater costs managing complications than they would’ve had if they’d funded the surgery in New Zealand,” he says.
Is everyone using Botox?
While a Mexican face lift is a step too far for most of us, Botox is firmly in the mainstream – as Alex discovered firsthand. At 33, she’s decades away from needing (or wanting) major surgery, but the sight of lines starting to etch themselves onto her face led her to a cosmetic nurse’s office. “Also, every day on Instagram I see women twice my age with foreheads that look 10 years younger than mine and it makes me feel insane so yeah, no wonder I have fucking frown lines,” she writes.
In her piece, Alex talks to women who swear by injectables, women who recoil from them, and women – like herself – who feel both tempted and furious about the prospect. As she leaves the injector’s office, “I am bubbling with an incandescent fury that I don’t know where to direct,” she writes. “I am angry at the nice nurse for hurting my feelings, but I am angrier at myself for asking her to.”
Read: Is everyone getting Botox without me?
Selfies, filters and ‘Instagram face’
What’s driving this collective obsession? Part of the answer is in our pockets. As Julia Coffey wrote for The Conversation, selfie-editing apps like FaceTune and FaceApp give people a glimpse of a new and improved version of themselves with smoother skin, bigger eyes or sharper cheekbones. Cosmetic procedures offer a chance to make that fantasy self a reality.
And as Jia Tolentino explored in The New Yorker (paywalled), all those subtle digital edits are helping to create a new beauty monoculture: “Instagram Face”, which Tolentino described as “a single, cyborgian face… young … of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips … it’s distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic.” What began with the Kim Kardashians of the world has trickled down through celebrities, influencers and selfie-editing apps to become an achievable (if expensive) aesthetic standard for women everywhere.
Social media – or something else?
While social media is an easy villain, the real driver could be more basic: it’s simply easier than ever to buy a better face. As Martha Gill puts it in The Guardian, “it is more affordable, more widespread and more advertised. Another huge barrier to treatment is meanwhile falling away: stigma.”
That new openness is something Alex’s piece lays bare. For many women she spoke to, the deciding factor wasn’t a celebrity’s wrinkle-free forehead, but a friend’s. One got her first injections after complimenting a pal: “She said, ‘thanks, I get Botox’ – then I looked into it and started getting it too.” One user summed up how many of us feel: “So many of my friends get it, and it makes you feel like you’re in this race against time – and everyone else.”
Related:
- Amberleigh Jack: New me, new face? It’s easy to see how Botox can become addictive (Sunday Star Times, paywalled)
- Alex Casey: ‘It’s insidious and dangerous’: The kids fighting wrinkles before their 10th birthday (The Spinoff)
