A few weeks ago, I met a friend for dinner and drinks after a long time. “Notice anything different?” she asked, waving her index finger around her face. I sat there, scrutinising her profile for an entire minute before she revealed she’d got a non-surgical nose job. It was hard to clock in the dim light of the restaurant. I carefully perused the before and after images, and the only noticeable change was that a slight bump on the bridge of her nose had now been smoothened out thanks to hyaluronic acid filler. She had also had a lash lift (which I assumed was mascara) and got chin filler. If she hadn’t been so excited to share, I would never have guessed she’d done anything to her face. At 25, she looked like her natural self, but in a flawless kind of way. Her skin was radiant, she barely had any make-up on, and she looked fresh as a daisy at the end of a workday.
You might have noticed how a lot of the popular, young, attractive faces on social media now have this natural, healthy, lit-from-within look going on. Clear, dewy complexions, natural-looking brows and lashes, and balanced faces—if this were the ’90s, they could have easily been cast in a cold cream commercial. And it’s impossible to tell what, if any, treatments and procedures they’ve undergone to achieve this look unless they reveal it themselves.
It wasn’t too long ago when cosmetic work would announce itself in the form of perpetually raised Botox brows, hollow cheeks or overly sculpted cheekbones, a trout mouth, or rigid facial expressions. Refined techniques and better products mean that the ‘done’ look has now fallen out of favour. Filler fatigue has set in, and the evidence lies in more and more users getting their lip and chin fillers dissolved.
Ask any good plastic surgeon or cosmetologist today and they will tell you: it’s all about subtle changes (or tweakments) instead of dramatic transformation. “What was happening earlier was that when injectables just came out, around 20 years ago, professionals were still learning how to do them,” explains Dr Kiran Sethi, founder and medical director of Isya Aesthetics in Delhi. “Now, injectors have a lot more experience, and we have a lot more modalities and products available to us.”
Dr Sethi is a big fan of phased regenerative treatments such as collagen stimulators and skin boosters which can help improve the elasticity, luminescence, and general health of skin. In her experience, instead of bringing reference images of celebrities like in the past, patients are hoping to mimic the effect of social media filters they see in their own selfies. “There is a huge change in the kind of results my patients wanted in the past versus now. The basics—that they want acne, scars, and pigmentation gone—have stayed the same, but now, the desire for reduction in the appearance of fine lines and pores, and that glazed, dewy skin look—that’s very new. The new in-demand look is clear, fresh, poreless, glass skin. It’s full lips but very natural—just a little plumper,” she explains. It’s like wanting Instagram’s Paris filter IRL. Chin elongation to balance the rest of the face, specifically for a more structured jawline is rising in popularity too.
Mona Seresht, a certified cosmetic dermatology physician assistant at Facile Dermatology + Boutique in Los Angeles, specialises in “natural and undetectable” injectables and creates social media content around skin health and cosmetic procedures to help demystify the process to her 160k plus followers. “The trend towards undetectable work is an exciting development, but it’s also a return to the core principles of what injectables were originally designed to do,” Seresht says. She adds that injectables like Botox and Dysport may have gotten a bad rap in the past, but they were always intended to create subtle, natural results. “The idea was never to create a ‘frozen’ or overly augmented appearance, but to enhance, restore, and refresh the face in a way that maintains its natural expressiveness.”
They don’t want it to look like they’ve had something done, but rather like they’ve had a great night’s sleep or a relaxing vacation. It’s more about subtlety and harmony.
“The tools and techniques have also evolved dramatically, which has enabled more precise, personalised results,” Seresht adds. “For instance, hyaluronic acid fillers now come in different consistencies and formulations tailored to specific areas of the face, which means we can inject in a way that mimics natural contours and structures. This allows for subtle, undetectable enhancements.” Most patients she sees in West Hollywood or Pasadena come in for small, incremental tweaks and won’t outright ask for a specific trending look like a very pronounced lip shape or overly lifted cheeks. “They don’t want it to look like they’ve had something done, but rather like they’ve had a great night’s sleep or a relaxing vacation. It’s more about subtlety and harmony.” The emphasis has shifted from ‘fixing’ something to enhancing what’s already there to look like the best, most refreshed version of oneself.
Technological advancements aside, there’s also been a clear shift in taste. Turned off by the overly filled Instagram Face, younger millennials and Gen Z-ers who came of age with social media are now dabbling in cosmetic enhancements, but with a more cautious and natural approach. Shruti, a 28-year-old who works as an operations manager at a CX consultancy, got her first microdose of hyaluronic acid lip filler earlier this year. “I already had naturally big lips, so I got a total of 0.5 unit to start with—0.3 on top and 0.2 on the bottom. I wanted it so my lips look more hydrated and my cupid’s bow to look more defined,” she explains. “Because of how natural it looks, you can’t really tell I’ve got fillers unless I tell people.” She’s also a fan of lash extensions, which allow her to skip curling her lashes and then going over them with mascara while getting ready for work every morning.
Taste, according to Seresht, is the biggest factor that defines what patients are asking for, as well as what practitioners are able to do. Younger patients, especially, are a lot more educated and discerning about injectables thanks to all the information available on social media. “They’re seeing influencers and celebrities who look naturally beautiful, and many of them have likely got injectables, but they aren’t obvious.”
Both Dr Sethi and Seresht stress the importance of researching the technique and aesthetic of the injector you’re likely to see. “The actual technique and aesthetic of your injector is so important. The injector may like a heavier look than you do, so one has to be clear. Patients should choose their doctor accordingly,” says Dr Sethi.
The interesting thing is that while people want the work to be undetectable, they are becoming increasingly open about discussing said work. While discussing this story, Priya Tanna, president of The Right Side, posited: “Are tweakments the new divorce?” Like divorce, which was an awkward dinner topic until it became widely accepted, talk of injectables, too, is undergoing a shift in public opinion. What would’ve been a controversial topic has become commonplace. Influencers too, are more transparent than ever about getting cosmetic work, creating vlogs and sharing details through AMAs as the stigma of “having work done” no longer exists.
Aaliyah Kashyap, a 23-year-old content creator recently posted a YouTube vlog about getting an under-eye filler for the first time before her bachelorette. “I have been using a lot of eye creams and stuff, and a lot of things haven’t really worked for me...This is a personal choice that I’m making and I’m excited for myself,” she says in her video. “It looks natural, which is why I love it.”
In addition to fillers and neuromodulators, semi-permanent treatments such as brow lamination, lash lifts, hard gel manicures, and quarterly teeth whitening, too, are more popular than ever. As TikTok puts it, it’s “being high maintenance to be low maintenance.” You splurge on beauty services and treatments once every few weeks and months to shave minutes off your morning routine and roll out of bed looking (almost) flawless.
It is worth noting that these enhancements, albeit subtle, are at odds for a generation that preaches body positivity and self-acceptance. Like Kashyap mentions over and over in her vlog, it’s a “personal choice.” Getting any kind of work is considered “elective” and “empowering” today. However, in all this, we must also acknowledge that we’re blurring the lines between what is truly natural and manufactured, twisting our perception of what is real, and setting a new bar, a more evasive standard of beauty for women to feel pressured to conform to again.
