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.

The argument that doing this is free choice doesn’t stack up. ‘Choices aren’t made in a vacuum’.

Read previous reply.

It is sad and driven by insecurity. Also the treatments need to be kept up so it never ends well.

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The culture of modifying faces in youth is worth critiquing.
It's not consequence free; it's expensive, there are risks (increased at the budget end of the market) and while many of the effects wear off, substances such as fillers are not entirely broken down as if they had never been used. What are they going to do elsewhere in the body?

It's not like ditching flares for drain pipes, having a perm cut out or wiping blue eyeshadow off when a trend changes.

Faces are important for expression, for human connection. Each face is naturally unique. These procedures detract from natural humanity and end up with weird uncanny valley looks.
In older women where there is aging, a modified face with younger aesthetic will still be betrayed by the hands and neck.

Young girls are growing up with distorted perceptions of beauty that do not naturally exist. That's poor for their self-esteem. There always has been beauty pressure and no doubt always will be, but to irreversibly modify the face is new.

I've already replied to a comment like yours.

Nobody’s a greater enemy of women than women themselves as this thread well demonstrates.

Let people do whatever the fuck they want. If you don’t want to do it that’s fine. I’d rather shit on my hands and clap than shop in Boden like so many on here enjoy but I don’t walk around the street commenting on how frumpy you all are.

Everyone likes different things and wants to look a different way and that’s fine.

Genuinely asking as you brought up these views being rooted in “deep misogyny “. Aren’t lip fillers and Botox also rooted in deep misogyny? The need to look like a sex doll and extremely young? So if I follow what you are saying the it isn’t judgement but a serious concern about a regression toward stronger misogynistic appearances?

"Upset"

And where is the hyperbole? Apart from the ones you're chucking around of course.

Mumsnet is a discussion board FYI.

It is all about choices, lots of bad choices eventually lead to thinking Botox is a good idea.

I think I agree with OP.

On the other hand, I do to some extent understand that the constant presence of cameras makes people want to always look camera-ready - on average a young woman probably has her photo taken everyday either in her or other people's selfies. I really hate looking bad (ie. my normal self) in photos, especially when people post them on sm for everyone to see.

Also, we live in a culture where women grow up seeing or hearing the constant criticism of women's bodies and faces, so there is this idea that women have to be perfect.

Who are you to tell people how they should feel?

If it was all free choice everyone would be making completely different choices and all of that would be cool. This is about looking a specific way only. It’s a stereotyped image of feminity. It’s not a ‘free choice’ at all.

Yes. Choices aren't made in a vacuum. Social pressures on women and girls are a very valid subject of discussion. See innumerable debates about body shaming, eating disorders, girls being over sexualised, etc.

The relentless focus on girls' appearances and physicality is depressing, OP. Plastic surgery is a burgeoning industry...

Something that concerns me is the never-ending rise of what a lot of women (and probably some men too, about women) feel is needed to be 'baseline'-level attractive. It is no longer enough to be clean, well-dressed (this is separate to 'do I personally find this person attractive). Makeup now goes without saying, time-consuming hair styling, and now botox and filler and extensive and largely unnecessary cosmetic dentistry. You see it on here - women will insist they look 'frumpy' and 'haggard' simply because they haven't had filler. Other women will recommend botox like someone might have recommended a new hair cut 20 years ago.

Of course many people don't feel like this, but it's impossible to deny that this is a driving force in some areas of society. And as other posters have noted, it is often lower-earning women who are the primary drivers of this - so they're losing out financially and more likely to be ripped off and suffer actual physical harm by going to some dodgy 'aesthetician' who operates out of a hairdressers, as opposed to somewhere more regulated with someone who knows a bit more about what they're doing.

ETA: even if you have money it can be a complete crapshoot. The Kardashians have millions between them - yet pretty much all of them look deformed. I don't mean 'have chosen a style I don't like' - Kim's eye has gone wonky, Khloe and Kris' noses are collapsing. Linda Evangelista would have had access to the best cosmeticians and plastic surgeons, yet still ended up incredibly unhappy with the outcome. Even if you slide down the latter, you end up with someone like Lauren Goodger or Molly-Mae pre-deflating. So when even those with £££££ can end up with incredibly poor results, what's the likelihood of someone going to Gawjus Gals Nails & Lashes ending up with a great outcome?

God forbid a woman is frumpy or haggard. She may as well be dead!

@ClairInTheCommunity I think the constant ‘selfie’ trend has a lot to answer for. I look fine in mirror & fine for age but in photos washed out & ugh next to those who know how to pose, pout & position etc & the camera seems to love made up, subtle work & larger faces & defined features. In our lookist culture, given a choice, people will go to the best looking professional in whatever field. Beauty is power & it seems elegance & culture down the list.

Do the ‘pretty’ have higher Uber ratings? Mary Beard started an interesting debate on X recently about how to increase her rating.

Gavin & Stacey showed how ridiculous it’s all got. Sonia & friends pouting & posing all through the hen do & Stacey (older) not so.

"Frumpy" is the worst criticism on here! It's all about the male gaze.

Botox, when done well, is not aging.
I can't stand it when uninformed people talk bollocks on here.

Those are both ridiculous words.

I'm not averse to things like Botox and fillers but the problem is when people go too far. Same with the eyelashes, they don't look subtle and well done, they look OTT.

I've had lip filler to give me some lips and nobody realised until I told them when it came up in conversation and I showed them the before and after photos. My mum noticed and I know she's not a fan and I think it does look more obvious when my mouth is moving. However for me it's a trade off, I've always hated my thin lips and whilst they are still small by today's standards they are much more visible.

I've tried the eyelashes but I'm just not very good at them and I haven't really found any that arent too much.

I can see how it's easy to go overboard though, I keep thinking I need a bit more filler in my lips because I'm used to it now. It would be very easy to keep going for more until I end up with massive over inflated ones that do not suit my face. I had them done at the dentist though and she said she would refuse to put too much in. She's had lip filler but her lips are naturally bigger and she has a bigger face and she told me her lips on my face would look ridiculous because it's so small. I kind of think everyone who does fillers and Botox should be the same but then again we are all adults so it's our choice.

I always think about what a previous poster ^^ has said a few comments above in terms of filler floating around the body.

It can’t be good for you.

Young women seem to have more of a disposable income now. Every high street has nail bars, lash bars, beauticians offering fillers and Botox. It's part of everyday care now for many women.
I've noticed that it starts young, though. I teach yr7 girls with the big false nails, false eyelashes and full face of makeup. Their parents are paying for this, so they must think it's ok.

I don't think we should describe young women constantly being told to alter their natural faces through the injection of chemicals so as to confirm with a current beauty standard as empowering.

It is quite remarkable how this 'trend' has taken hold on the younger age group 20-30s.
I'm talking mainly about fillers.
The reality is that it looks out of sync and unnatural and you can't help but notice that it looks awful in all age groups. Maybe there are a lot of subtle, more discreet examples walking amongst us which we do not notice because the results are more natural.
But the risk of the end result being a disaster is obvious.
In these (numerous) cases, there is absolutely nothing that enhances beauty. In the case of younger women, they would already have their own type of beauty to contend with. Why mess about with it and make yourself look worse?
For a start, a lot of average looking women grow into their looks. There is a natural proportion there which settles very nicely by the time they are in their mid 20s, certainly by the time they reach 30. And artificial perfect symmetry doesn't actually work. There is a natural balance which was created by nature. By then, most women are skilled enough to make the most of what they have if physical beauty is of importance to them.
I'm not sure, for example, what Kendall Jenner has had done. A perfectly beautiful young woman, all of a sudden she looks a lot more mature in the face.
And then, where does it end? If women with unlimited funds and access to the absolute best practitioners such as Madonna or Nicole Kidman can end up with less than satisfactory (and certainly not youthful) results, where does that leave the average woman embarking on this relentless quest for facial transformations?

It is clear all this is down to personal perception and inability to fully see themselves for how they look like to start with ( which is perfectly fine to start with for the majority of younger women). So some sort of dissonance which starts in the brain.
Then you have the added pressure from social media. Which we should not underestimate because it clearly influences a lot of women who either lack confidence or are impressionable (these two aspects, I believe, are shaped during growing up and this is where family guidance and examples play a very important role).
Then you have the affordability factor which makes some of these questionable alterations qui accessible.
I'm sure there are other factors. But the net result is a lot of young women embark on this journey of physical change and a lot of them end up with awful looking details on their faces and bodies which do not suit them and make the other people perceive them as looking wrong.
As for the future, who knows? It may become the norm and we just get used to this artificial irregular look, maybe in a few hundred years, maybe never? The brain can spot such changes, it's the way humans are, I don't know if this can be changed through evolution.
Or we may have a period of dire dissatisfaction when women would try to emulate AI generated beauty and fail at obtaining the results they envisaged.
Or maybe this whole nonsense will gradually disappear.

Whilst there is money to be made from these procedures and visual imagery paraded on social media, we'll carry on as we are and hope these interventions will become better, so that the end results don't look quite as bad quite as often.

As for medical risks... I despair.