Jia Tolentino reflects on ‘Instagram face’ and plastic surgery – NPR

Transcript TONYA MOSLEY, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley. Something strange is happening to the human face. Plastic surgery in the U.S. is increasingly designed to be invisible, and it’s working. Faces are being lifted, filled and reshaped to look naturally youthful and, at the same time, unnatural. My guess today, writer Jia Tolentino, says this new era of cosmetic enhancement is quietly changing the way people think about aging and what we believe a real face should look like. In her latest New Yorker piece, “Our Plastic-Surgery Nightmare,” Tolentino reports that cosmetic procedures, like Botox and fillers, once associated with middle age, are now becoming popular for teenagers, with plastic surgeons reporting a significant uptick of patients under 30. Some are even posting photos online, asking strangers whether a face-lift is their only hope. One influencer got famous by striking his jawline with a hammer as part of the online movement known as looksmaxxing. Other young men followed suit. And artificial intelligence trained on millions of these new faces is generating new beauty standards. Tolentino argues that what’s changing isn’t just our appearance. It’s our relationship to reality. Her argument is that when every face can be
Read More