Plastic surgery

Saturday

Peter Watson

Facelifts are to Palm Beach as politics is to DC

Gossip galore in Palm Beach as the turbulent year of 2025 stumbled to its close. Top of the heap is the tale of the popular maître d’ of Bice, a swanky restaurant (the original opened years ago opposite Teatro alla Scalla in Milan), who has been arrested by ICE, allegedly for driving a car with darkened windows (regarded as a suspicious practice). He was also – again, allegedly – forced to eat off the floor at “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration detention facility in Ochopee, Florida. This was, apparently, judged as a condign punishment for a maître d’, ICE showing a bleak sense of humor. The maître d’, of Mexican origin, has been in the US for 20 years and has a work permit. As one local said: “He is part of our lives, not just our nights out.” Vigils have been held.

facelift

Friday

Ella Whelan

Kardashian clones have taken over

Stop the press: the Kardashians have admitted to going under the knife. Replying to speculation about her plastic surgery procedures, reality TV star Khloe Kardashian listed all the work she’s had done from nose jobs to "salmon sperm facials". Bears defecate in the woods, the Pope’s a Catholic and yes, it takes money and scalpels to look airbrushed in real life.Why should you care about Khloe’s collagen microthreads, or her mother’s startling face lift? Because the California alien look has become the beauty standard for many young women. The Marilyn-Monroe-on-steroids look popularized by the Kardashians, with the kind of huge backsides and invisible waists that would make Betty Boop look plain, has caused all kinds of dark and interesting shifts in popular ideas of femininity.

Kardashians

Monday

Ani Wilcenski

The Mar-a-Lago face-off

In all the post election danger-to-democracy commentary, one unexpected new peril has emerged: the “nationwide surge of Mar-a-Lago face." Best exemplified by demented far-right activist Laura Loomer and former Fox News host-slash-former Donald Trump Jr. squeeze Kimberly Guilfoyle, Mar-a-Lago face is a cosmetic look characterized by immense volumes of cheek filler, heavy eye shadow and enough Botox to petrify the face. The male version could be seen when Florida congressman and attorney general-nominee-for-ten-seconds Matt Gaetz stepped out at the RNC with so much Botox and foundation that he instantly became a bipartisan meme. I’d argue that Mar-a-Lago face is not taking over America anytime soon. It’s barely taking over the Republican Party.

cosmetic

Thursday

Josie Cox

The curious case of Botox babies

"You look great,” my friend beamed at me as she opened her apartment door a few months ago. “Have you had Botox?” Of course I hadn’t. I’d had something that’s almost certainly far rarer — especially as a parent — in this age of ubiquitous beauty-on-demand services: eight solid hours of sleep, followed by a strong cup of coffee, followed by a ten-minute power walk through a New York City downpour replete with gale-force winds blowing in off the Hudson. Take that, injectable dermal fillers. Botox, it seems, is everywhere. Many of my acquaintances, even those barely old enough to remember Tamagotchis or Princess Diana’s funeral or that AOL dial-up tone, casually drop into conversation how overdue they are for an appointment with Doctor So-And-So.

Botox

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Why is everyone getting bad plastic surgery?

Take a look at the side-by-side above. Which woman do you find more attractive? They are both photos of Erin Moriarty, an actress on Amazon Prime’s The Boys. The comparison went viral this week for obvious reasons. The first photo appears to be from 2016. The second photo was posted on Moriarty’s Instagram a few days ago. She is twenty-nine years old in the second photo — the same age as I am.  Most people would say that the woman on the left is objectively more attractive. She looks healthier, for one, but more importantly, she looks human. Faces are not supposed to be perfectly symmetrical. In the photo on the right, Moriarty looks uncanny. Even if you didn’t have the photo on the left as a reference point, you’d know that something was “off.

bad plastic surgery

Tuesday

Kara Kennedy

Getting a nose job in Istanbul

I’ve never been one for doing what I’m told. My first cigarette came soon after a family member voiced his disgust at “cancer sticks.” I have a DIY tattoo on my finger, which came after giving one to my friend with the same needle. In high school, the uniform code included “natural hair,” so obviously I dyed mine blue. My defense — “it’s the color of the sky!” — only led to harsher punishment. So, naturally, after being told not to get a nose job, that’s exactly what I did. I’ve never understood why those who have had nose jobs are so shy about it. They’re noticeable, painful, life-changing and fairly expensive.

nose

Thursday

Stephen L. Miller

Faces off

Humankind’s ability to destroy itself has always outweighed its desire to fix the broken pieces. Conflict and war create great suffering, anguish and death, but they also lead to discoveries in technology, industrialization and, we learn from Lindsey Fitzharris’s The Facemaker, the invention of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. At the dawn of the Great War, it became painfully evident to those in the trenches that contemporary developments in warfare had far exceeded those in the world of medicine. These ghastly developments are illustrated in great detail in Fitzharris’s book, which tracks the military career and early life of Harold Gillies, the man who is largely credited as the father of modern plastic surgery as well as with having performed the first phalloplasty.

facemaker fitzharris