Cosmetic Surgery and Young Women: Interview with Newsweek

Although it is nothing new, the internet has provided people a new way to objectify and make women self-conscious about how they look. Even if it is not an obviously photoshopped image of some unattainably “perfect” person (many of which are AI generated now), it is an advertisement for makeup, or a listicle on ways to please a man. Being confronted with your own imperfections has become unavoidable.

When Skylar Sorkin went to an industry party, she was amazed and dismayed that she was “the only woman there without plastic surgery or lip filler”. Newsweek’s Melissa Fleur Afshar covered the story, in "Woman, 27, Attends Work Event—Has Shock Realization About Beauty Standards", and elaborated on the prevalence of cosmetic surgeries, particularly for women: “Social media, influencer culture, and a rapidly shifting beauty standards have all contributed to this rise. The dominance of these enhancements has left having a face untouched by cosmetic procedures as something of a rarity in some parts of the world.”

Afshar reached out to Jordan Conrad, PhD, LCSW, for a comment on how whether cosmetic surgery is a sign of something deeper. "There is a lot of judgment around cosmetic surgery, but it helps a lot of people," Jordan said, however he cautioned that it can be misused: "The trouble is that because it does help some people it gets justified for all people.”

Echoing Afshar’s point about social media, Jordan explains that “in the same way that Gen Z and Gen Alpha use TikTok the way other generations use Google, so too do many young women use Instagram to measure current trends, including fashion and fitness trends." When this gets turned toward how people perceive themselves, it can be life deranging: "The issue is a bit worse than that because Instagram has become so ubiquitous, it now functions as a bit like a 'baseline reality' against which everything else can be measured.”