OPINION: Women's beauty and cosmetic treatments have gone too far

Aesthetician boutiques have recently popped up all over the country to save women from fat, wrinkles, thin lips and more. In recent years “baby botox” was invented as preventative botox for young people. 

I realised that the lengths that girls would go to maintain beauty standards were bonkers when I was on a lunch break at work three years ago. The topic of conversation in the tea room was what procedures we all would like to get done. The ladies I worked with each wanted at least two different procedures - liposuction, lip filler, and fat dissolvers for their face was all on the table for discussion. 

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Three years later -  Kim Kardashian’s company Skims has launched a new “face sculpting” apparatus that sold out in under 24 hours. The new technology promises to shape your face with  Velcro closures at the top and nape of the neck that allow for “easy, everyday wear”. The cloth binds your face and resembles a “scolds bridle” - a medieval torture device that was used to punish gossipers. 

Many women in favour of aesthetic procedures and the litany of new products developed to change your appearance say that they aren’t hurting anyone, these are simply the things that make them comfortable in their own (surgically enhanced, shop-bought) skin. I think these women would do well to think about why they might feel uncomfortable in the first place. 

In the 80s, feminists had a bad reputation in the media for burning bras and being hairy - aka not giving a damn about beauty norms and conventions that apply to women alone. I think we could learn from this.

The popular liberal feminism of our time has emphasised the right for women to choose whatever lifestyle they want - whether this lifestyle is personally oppressive to themselves or others does not seem to be a question that we are ready to ask ourselves. 

The normalisation of cosmetic procedures and the ever-widening array of must-have beauty products has an easy explanation - it is very profitable for corporations to make women feel inadequate in their appearance. This profit motive floats down on a micro-level too; with influencers online being paid by the aestheticians to shill unnecessary, invasive, and painful procedures to other women. 

Feminist Jameela Jamil has a term for these women who advocate for their own oppression: she calls them “double agents of the patriarchy”. I believe that it is in no way progressive to advertise products to other women so that they may reach a coercive beauty standard that suggests that your God-given face is not good enough. 

Shockingly, many of the centres that inject women with fillers (to enhance their lips, their cheeks, their chins etc.) do not have a nurse or doctor on site. It is commonplace for staff to have taken a one day course and then go working as a “cosmetic consultant”. This can have deadly consequences for women and girls - with some having gone blind, and others having been disfigured - which is arguably worse than a few wrinkles or spots, if you think about it. 

While women are obsessing over whether they should be slim-thick or heroin chic, one thing is true - we are not learning about the world but are instead making our world smaller. Obsessing over physical aesthetics is not only physically harmful to women but it is emotionally unfulfilling. It is up to us to turn-away from our narcissistic impulses. 

Susan Sontag wrote in On Women in 1972 that “Women have another option. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society's double standard about aging. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth.”

We would do well to tell the truth about ourselves and accept our looks as they are.