Vampire facials, under-eye fillers, ‘prejuvenation’: how did cosmetic tweakments get so extreme? | Georgina Lawton

Cosmetic procedures are on the rise among younger people; I'm barely 30. Still this is about more than just clinging to youth

Everyone goes through it: a reckoning with one's own mortality in the mirror, poking at eye bags and tugging at folds of loose skin. Am I looking a bit rough? It's part of the human condition to fear ageing, but among millennials and gen Z there seems to be a heightened anxiety around growing older, coupled with an increasingly casual attitude towards getting fillers and Botox compared with previous generations.

Almost half of millennial women polled by the BBC in 2019 said they believed that having a cosmetic procedure was akin to having a haircut. I can say from experience that it is not. Like many, I have fallen victim to negative anti-ageing rhetoric. After months of staring at my tired face on Zoom calls during lockdown, I felt as if my hot years were slipping through my fingers. When the world opened up, I found a doctor to restore" my hollowed out under-eyes with 1ml of filler. I was barely 28.

Georgina Lawton is the author of Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity and the Truth About Where I Belong

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