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 think weight loss jabs do turn people into something confusing and slightly alien in that they have no interest in food and going out for a meal socially is uncomfortable for them as they can't really join in. Also can have weird side effects

Of course if it's just short term and they can stop being overweight permanently then that's great but it sounds like some people are taking it long term

NRTF.

This is wrong. Purely because this isn't what women actually look like.

It's a decision to have "filler, hair dye, peircings, tattoos, fat, thin, boob job, short skirts or other clothing choices". Therefore is fair to discuss on why they are doing so.

They're allowed all that in school? Ar the secondary i work in its no nails,no lashes and minimal makeup

I feel concerned OP & I would be more concerned if I had daughters. I agree to a certain extent that people can do what they like to their bodies, appearance etc but the current 'trend' of filler, blown up lips etc looks awful 😖. I was giving my skin a good cleanse/pluck/moisturise etc yesterday & really looking at myself in the mirror (this is rare!) & I thought to myself 'my skin is uneven & lumpy & bumpy with a few black hairs' then I rolled my eyes & thought that is how skin is supposed to look! But this is not what you see on TV or in films etc & now out on the High Street. It's worrying

Women use Botox and fillers. Some are overdoing the lip fillers but.what they do with their own bodies is their choice. Frankly, this thread is about gossip and judgement.

100 years ago women were crucified as harlots for using carnine lipstick and carbon as eye enhancer. Cosmetics have moved on and Botox these days are used by millions of women to get rid of deep wrinkles. I'm lucky I don't have them yet but won't have a problem treating them with Botox if they appear.

Live and let live. For someone who use so much make up, you seem to be full of judgement.

Agree people should be aware of health risks, including mental health, of any procedure or product, including hair dye and make up.

But not a new thing: dangerous beauty products have always been around. Elizabeth I’s famous pale-faced look may’ve hastened her death.

blog.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/dangerous-beauty-hazardous-chemicals-and-poisons-in-historic-cosmetics/

I cannot agree with you more. They will have children who look nothing like them and therefore the kids will look in the mirror and be confused. What's going to happen ?

There are a lot of really really badly done aesthetic tweaks going around. When I see young people with massively inflated lips and obvious Botox and the other things that often go alongside these, when they haven’t even had time to grow into their faces before making these major judgment calls, I wonder what trauma they have been through, to feel that need to alter the face they present to the world.
Will we see the House of Commons full of women MPs sporting badly done Botox and hastily infilled lips and cheeks in 10 years’ time? They are after all more likely to be interviewed on a bad hair day, in worse lighting, than most people. I wonder who succumbs and feels the need most. I suspect it comes down to friendship groups, across the demographics.

OP doesn’t appear a bit upset, maybe just confused as to why young women are trying to model themselves on plastic Barbie dolls. I too would be concerned if I had a daughter making herself look like a caricature.

Filler and Botox overload, it looks hideous and they look so much older.

It can’t be ignored. It’s everywhere and particularly pushed down throats on SM. The exact same face, no variations. No it doesn’t affect me personally- but for my children? Absolutely-bloody-lutely it affects them. Everything they see online is from a filler-clone. Half their friends have a filler-clone-mother who buys all the drunk elephant skincare and expensive make-up for their 11 year olds and encourages total fakery which then seeps it’s way into MY child’s life. Everything about it screams that natural faces, ageing, normal lips are ugly. It’s not just about that little boost for the filler-clone- it’s a rejection of every natural face around them.
It shouldn’t be normalised.

As it should be, children are being robbed of their childhood, particularly girls.

Thank you!

I'm so tired of people immediately responding with 'it's none of your business' or 'why does it bother you?' when you raise a quiet concern about things in general like this.

It IS concerning to see so many young people turning to 'interventions' like this and injecting chemicals into their bodies for what appears to be no good reason.

I've spent my whole career in the beauty industry and this is fashion that will change.
We had punk, make up sculpting and grunge.
We already see a return to classic polish for nails due to safety concerns and make up is less than it was five years ago. The kadashian look is out.
I have seen women with very thin lips and usually make up tricks solve this. The trout pout is just a male fantasy. It has a very vulgar name in the trade. My concerns are around the ages of the customers who have no wrinkles to fill. You can stretch pores if you pump them with injectables. The problem is no one wants to tell a customer no. No to tweekments, no to HEMA (a chemical found in professional nail enhancements) on eczema/psoriasis suffer's nails. They lose money and get in trouble with their bosses. What would shock most people is the beauty industry is run by men. They drive the narrative.
I'm still working but I can tell you there are only six top females in this industry. It's truly misogynist.

Yes. Nearly all the girls have it. If we did anything there would be massive problems with parents and attendance. It's better to have them in school learning.

Hi OP. I agree with you. I'm mid 40's and when I look back I laugh at my fashion choices and the way I wore my make up. It was of its time and fun. No regrets.

My concern is that there is no long term research on the long term impact of injecting your face. Is this going to alter how women look forever.

Imagine if wearing Heather Shimmer permanently changed the colour or shape of your lips. That's how I'm trying to understand this all.

Making a choice on changing your appearance in your 20's shouldn't make a difference to how you look in your 40's. But we can't say that for sure. Happy to be corrected if there is evidence I have missed.

Also this same demographic may possibly in the future argue that society encouraged it and wished people in their lives had offered them a balanced view not just your body so do whatever you want to it.

Anyway OP, I agree with you and it does also concern me.

Its not in any way comparable to lipstick, if you want to compare physical ways to acheive a look through history, look at footbinding, neck rings and white lead.

I think there is an element of class snobbery that comes into the judgements people make on this.

But I do disagree that the characters you describe in this post don't do this sort of thing.

Of my friends, two have had Botox and fillers, one of them has had other surgeries. One is an academic with a PhD living in a huge house in Hampstead, the other also highly educated and politically active and living in Islington. Both from upper middle class families.

I also have friends and family members from working class backgrounds. Some have enhancements, some don't.

From my observations it's more about how concerned the person is about being physically attractive, as all those I've mentioned place quite a high value on their looks. None of the people I have described have parents who have had plastic surgery or are particularly looks oriented.

I on the other hand look like a turnip with teeth so I'm not sure I've made better choices 😆 although I hope my friends didn't feel they were not good enough without the enhancements and it wasn't from a place of insecurity.

One of the other wider implications is that women can be persuaded to spend
£££s on needless 'beauty-fashion' treatments by being made to feel bad about the way they look. Women earn less than men throughout their lives (gender pay gap) and retire on lower pensions. It's often financial dependency that forces women to stay in abusive relationships. Women need to be financially independent. Spending thousands on unnecessary cosmetic treatments drains their resources.

One of the things we need to teach all our girls is that a) they are lovely as they are and b) commerce/ big business regards them as prey and will say/do/invent anything it can in order to part them from their money by selling them the idea that things and treatment are the way to happiness and self-esteem. They aren't, it has to come from within.

@Anotherparkingthread, I'm guessing you're one of poor botoxed and filled saps I see out and about everywhere. Nothing shrieks 'I have low self-esteem' than a sex-doll-faced woman who's paid silly money to have all character and charm eliminated from her face. Even worse when, as a previous poster said, she's being led around tottering on ridiculously high heels by a man.

The key to contentment with yourself is to be physically fit within your limits healthwise, eat right, sleep right, be fulfilled socially via community/family/friends, have a purpose. When I fulfil most of these I look glowing, the rest is just all transient stuff that you can't get attached to as we all get ill, grow old, have life crises. In my opinion.

Agree, they look like replicated mannequins turned out of the same mould from the factory conveyor belt intended for a Halloween display. There’s no individuality…pumped up lips, eyes lashes as thick as yard brushes, permanent surprised eyebrows, and no movement in the face for natural expression giving them fixed weird horror movie features. And what is it with those hamster face cheek implants????

It's marketing genius. Once some starts to fill their lips they pretty much have to continue otherwise they are left with a worse appearance then when they started. I'm too old for it to matter but I'm pleased it isn't a wagon that I have got onto.

What is the relevance of women being 'crucified as harlots'? I think that morality judgments would have been made even if the women had been using safe, non toxic products.

The point is that women (and some men) are having stuff injected into their bodies when nobody is clear about the long term safety of this. If it is discovered in ten years that many women are permanently deformed or that they have, say, arthritic type health issues or worse (as people once did from white lead poisoning) I imagine there would only be a very small group of hardcore devotees prepared to take that risk. These treatments have become normalised far too quickly. Be a guinea pig at your own risk. Your body, your choice and all that jazz. But while some people might just like a good old bitch about other women's appearances, plenty of us would like to have an adult conversation about the potential long term outcomes of these treatments. If you're a child and your mother is having Botox or fillers or whatever, you may one day have to watch them suffer, or even end up as their carer. I suppose we could all just keep our fingers crossed.

I know you are worried about the topic but I have to say your daughter sounds fantastic.