What are people doing to their faces?!

[Mania89]

I am mid 30s. Colour my hair, wear makeup, thread my eyebrows etc so not completely natural but my goodness what are people doing to their faces?! Young women who are beautiful now have so much injected into their faces that they cannot move them at all. I was looking back at photos in my mid 20s and was wondering why on earth did I worry about my looks at all. Hindsight is wonderful! And I am despairing that girls younger than this have already started to inject Botox and fillers. The world is going mad and don’t even get me started on weight loss injections for those who are not clinically obese! I have two daughters and really feel so worried for them up.

I'm totally with you, OP. I also have a young daughter and I hope this awful pornesque look will be old fashioned by the time she's a teenager. It probably will be - we have swung so far towards looking synthetic, the style pendulum will eventually swing back to a more natural look.

This. I couldn’t agree more.

I have no problem with beauty trends, it's interesting to see what comes and goes in fashion. Looking back, our dream matte mousse too dark for our faces and sperm eyebrows must have been a talking point.

It's just the permanence of this current trend and the risks involved. I can't imagine letting someone with less training than a Clarks shoe fitter injecting god knows what into my face for the sake of beauty. Dream matte mousse washed off with no harm done thank god, what are these women going to do when fashion moves along?

Are you struggling at the moment? Is that why your automatic response is hostility? It’s very difficult to search for a reply from a specific user within a thread which moves as quickly as this. If you can’t be bothered to retype it you could just copy and paste as it’s dead easy to find your own posts.

@abs12 life is so much sweeter for the better looking & beautiful. I wonder if social media & selfie culture has brought that into focus? Look at the averagely talented who look great & earn a fortune.

I have dc & nephew’s & nieces & it does worry me. I live near a university so lots of young people & the amount with lip fillers etc is quite staggering. I can’t imagine how much pressure there is to spend on looking “good” nowadays in terms of beauty & fashion.

The one time I had botox was when I had to have it injected into my left masseter muscle for a very painful condition called TMJD.
It half crossed my mind to ask if they would put a bit in my frown lines! (I am 51 and have certainly had stresses and strains over the years like most people)
I think this trend has come about for many reasons, most have already been mentioned. But I think people have become much more inward looking, without many hobbies, interests etc. It's almost as if people, maybe girls more than boys, only have their own looks and Instagram accounts as their hobby. After all, if they had other, arguably more worthwhile things to think about, their looks would not be the most Important aspect of their life.

This what Mumsnet is for; debate and discussion about all sorts of varied topics.

Thank you for posting. On some of the other threads I have asked about what happens after fillers / Botox wear off or move etc, and no one really gave any real explanation of what exactly happens. So I went with that it is quite likely that it isn't 100 known yet. The most frequent reply was, "I just do it again".

life is so much sweeter for the better looking & beautiful.. But filler is unlikely to turn someone into a beauty

It’s that herd mentality and accompanied with social media perceiving it to be the norm that women feel they have to have so much work done on themselves.

Yes people can choose to do what they like to their bodies, but I think it’s really sad women feel their natural faces are not good enough 😔 When you see photos of young girls decades ago they really do look so beautiful being natural and carefree.

and don’t even get me started on weight loss injections for those who are not clinically obese!

An ex work colleague of DD is getting weight loss injections online and is worryingly underweight. All her workmates are telling her that they are worried about her, but she wants to go down to seven stone. She is tall - about 5'9" I think, and I have seen recent photos of this girl. She looks anorexic.

It’s getting sad when our beauty standards actually involve manipulating our faces with fillers and other chemicals. We’re living in a strange time where the media encourages women to turn themselves into visual sex objects while at the same time insisting this is empowering. I can’t think of a time when we have been so deluded and self destructive.

Yep, also the weird homogeneity of it. I remember Leslie Ash saying she felt ashamed to be seen out, now people want her look.

I genuinely don't know anything about this stuff. I don't even know what filler is. I have deep lines on my face....think they are called marionette lines and a deep V frown line.
I was vaguely thinking of trying to improve the situation. But I don't know where to start and don't have the money. So i suppose this is it?

Each to their own. I guess lots of beauty procedures can be lethal or life changing: severe reactions to hair dye, boob job complications etc.

But I agree with you @Mania89. What I struggle to understand is why people who use Botox, fillers etc don’t seem aware how obviously fake it looks and how it rarely enhances unique natural beauty, which everyone has. It makes people look like weird clones. And, in some women, does appear to reference a sex doll, and thereby pander to a male gaze fetish.

Even very expensive, more gentle changes (used by models, actors etc) still make their face look plastic to me.

But, I guess the same could be argued for bleached hair which is clearly fake and IMHO that can look fabulous.

This, plus with most beauty trends people still look different to each other. Even with surgery like boob jobs people have different shapes, sizes, styles of boobs. This one is creating a whole bunch of clones with identical lips etc. They all end up looking like Chloe Ferry (if they're under 40) or Carol Vorderman (over 40).

I work with a lovely young woman, she's 19 and very naturally beautiful, she was confident and never wore makeup.

Since starting to get fillers she is almost unrecognisable, she went from a very subtle lip enhancement to now having very large puffy lips, filler in her chin, jaw and cheeks and Botox, she is 19! Also hair extensions, eyelash extensions and a serious sunbed addiction.

The most notable difference is in her confidence though, she now wears heavier and heavier makeup each day and constantly talks about what she will have 'done' next, is always asking 'is my makeup smudged?' And topping up her makeup before/after lunch etc.

It's such a shame, when she first started working with us she would happily pop into other offices, deal with clients directly etc but since the fillers she is very anxious about doing these tasks.

I am not sure if the anxiety caused the fillers or the fillers caused the anxiety but it is very sad to see, she says her mum is not happy about it all and is worried about her and I can see why.

I think the whole “living for the lens” skews things. So something can look good in photos because it’s a still motion but then in real light, animated things can look quite different.

They are all sheep. Following the same look.
There’s no individuality or enhancing natural beauty, it’s all this skewed idea of what the male gaze wants.

Anyone can do whatever they choose and can afford, to make themselves look and feel how they want to.

What I don’t understand is that, naturally, people’s faces and bodies are different- hair and eye colour, height, build etc. What I see in those selfies is cookie cutter. They all look the same, with the pouting lips, feathery eyelashes and eyebrows. It’s difficult to distinguish between them.

Yeah looks laughable really. Very sad

Yes, but at least it's easier to make your eyebrows look unfucked.

I think the whole “living for the lens” skews things

Absolutely. It turns brides into bridezillas for a start. The number of threads on MN where the venue (for the photos) takes a higher priority than the guests is ridiculous.

Then the bridezilla throws a strop when her child free wedding abroad or in the middle of nowhere results in guests declining their invitations.

The term preventative Botox is a misnomer. Paralysing facial muscles displaces movement to other areas of the face - see the ‘bunny lines' around the upper nose some people get from paralysing muscles around eye to try to prevent crows feet. Overuse also risks muscular atrophy and loss of sensation. Links to a paper with further links below that article. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2467981X23000215

I'm almost 59 and i don't have any wrinkles (no botox either). If I'd started 'preventative' botox in my youth I'd just have wasted my money