Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Once, plastic surgery seemed garish, its own obvious signs a kind of cost that people paid for refusing to appear old. This blunt artificiality has not vanished completely; it is present, for instance, in Mar-a-Lago Face, a hyper-exaggerated look common among the women of the second Trump Administration, accompanied by a makeup style that signals a lack of interest in the natural. (Like the Administration, Mar-a-Lago Face locates power in the spectacle of dismissing reality altogether.) But the most expensive plastic surgery today is seamless, vaguely Gnostic, suggestive of complex secret knowledge. On social media, speculative analysts pick apart the work that people may have had done. Sometimes, celebrities disclose details in response—Kylie Jenner posted, “445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!!!! silicone!!!” in reply to a TikTok about her breast implants. Vogue dubbed 2025 “the year of plastic surgery transparency.” Such candor is ostensibly laudatory, except that when celebrities disclose their plastic surgery it often feels like a speech act akin to a land acknowledgment: something typically said before another act of perpetuating the system identified as unjust. Vogue quoted a plastic surgeon who claimed that the new openness helps “to alleviate the unrealistic standards, which can cause self-confidence issues in young women,” and also helps make “plastic surgery feel more human and more accessible.” In other words, if celebrities disclose their plastic surgery, the rest of us will get more plastic surgery, and that’s good, because we have bad self-esteem from so many celebrities getting plastic surgery.

For now, facelifts before retirement age remain a niche habit of the unusually wealthy and vain. But that demographic is overrepresented in our visual culture—these are faces acquired for the purpose of profitable display, often on screens—and so the desire to alter one’s face spreads rapidly. A recent survey by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery projected a nineteen-per-cent increase in facial procedures. The authors also note that “one of the most meaningful shifts observed in this year’s survey isn’t which procedures patients are choosing, but when they’re choosing to do them.” Fifty-seven per cent of surgeons reported an increase in patients under thirty seeking cosmetic work. In 2024, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons tabulated almost fifty thousand Botox and filler procedures for patients under the age of twenty.

If you Google “facelift in your thirties,” your top suggested search results might proclaim that “mini facelift surgery is ideal” for those at that age and that “a mini facelift at 35” can be “a considered and fulfilling choice.” The A.I.-generated squib at the top of my results told me that surgical facelifts are uncommon for thirtysomethings, and that early aging is “typically treated” with injectables and laser resurfacing. The range of visible argument is so limited. It’s not hard to understand why so many young people, living their lives in dialogue with what they see on their phones, have gone from buying into the idea of “proactive” Botox to believing that visible aging, in any form, at any age, should be treated as one would treat a disease…

That so many of the most visible women on the internet resemble one another has already had swift consequences in the realm of visual A.I., which understands these qualities to be central to what a woman is. When reporters at the Washington Post asked three A.I. tools to generate images of a “normal woman,” in 2024, nearly every woman produced was thin and light-skinned. When prompted to show a “beautiful woman,” every woman was thin; just two per cent showed any visible sign of age; the vast majority had light- or medium-toned skin. A.I. image generators love to spit out hot women; on X, Elon Musk regularly shares short videos of beautiful fantasy girls generated by his own technology, Grok Imagine. This past November, he posted an unselfconsciously tragic prompt—“She smiles and says ‘I will always love you’ ”—and also the result: a doe-eyed brunette, freckled and glowing. In May, he posted a video of a freaky jellyfish princess blowing bubbles. Both of these artificial females had variations of Instagram Face, and both wore a look of unconditional devotion that is mainly captured, for public consumption, in pornography—which, of course, A.I. is trained on, and is now used to produce.’ (from the New Yorker)