In 2022, We'll Still Hate the Way We Look
The devil works hard, but plastic surgeons work harder.
As we inch closer to death, America's cohort of nip-tuck masterminds are coming up with more novel ways look like you're in your reproductive prime.
Judging from Yelp's beauty trend forecast for 2022, we'll still hate the way we look in the new year, giving rise to all sorts of new-fangled procedures.
According to data culled from the website, the Kylie Jenner effect is still in full force. Granted, it's evolved from balloon-like fillers to subtler tweaks.
Searches for "lip flips," a plumping procedure popularized by TikTok, are up 107 percent compared to last year. Lip blushing, essentially semi-permanent lip tint tattooed to the mouth, is also surging.
People are also down with injecting platelet rich fibrin (PRF), harvested from their own blood, into their face and scalp. "With searches for [PRF injection] up 44 percent, we're predicting it goes mainstream in 2022," Yelp reported.
Searches for buccal fat removal, a surgery that slims the face by carving out fat from the cheeks, increased by 16 percent — a trend I'd guess is at least partially caused by Bella Hadid's increasingly chiseled appearance (though Hadid denies going under the knife, surgeons and onlookers have long guessed that buccal fat removal has played a role in shaping her gradually YASS-ified face).
It's safe to say that social media, particularly TikTok, helps dictate cosmetic surgery trends.
On the app, #plasticsurgery boasts over 10.7 billion views, in part thanks to the scores of plastic surgeons who promote their work on the platform with seductively dramatic before-and-after videos.
It's even trendy for users to document the procedures they've undergone, via viral challenges like Nose Job Check.
These challenges, as well as content peddled by surgeons on the app, create a kind of vicious cycle in which cosmetic procedures are introduced to viewers, who subsequently begin to believe they need to undergo the procedure themselves.
(For example: I never entertained the idea of under-eye filler until I saw photos of it on Instagram.)
I'm all for doing whatever the hell you want to your face (whatever, YOLO!) but still — it's slightly unsettling to think about what we'd look like if the internet didn't exist.
