Influencers and the Pursuit of Perfection
With 80 000 followers on Twitter and 12.8 million on Instagram, Joselyn Cano was a popular 29-year-old influencer. On December 16th, 2020, a tweet informed the world of her death.
'Omg Joselyn Cano died in Colombia getting surgery. That's wild.'
Cano reportedly died following complications of a Brazilian butt-lift she had travelled to Colombia to undertake. This surgery has become increasingly popular over the last couple of decades; many surgeons credit the rise to Kim Kardashian's astronomic fame and social media domination. Sometimes named 'the most powerful influencer in the world', Kim's success has been linked to her body-shape throughout her career. Dubbed the 'Mexican Kim Kardashian', it's no wonder that Cano would seek cosmetic enhancement to further emulate a similar look. But Brazilian butt-lifts also have the highest death rate of all aesthetic procedures; one fatality for every 3 000 surgeries.
Even for the general public, social media's impact on our body image, mental and physical health is evident. Everyone wants to look their best in photos. At eighteen, my friends excitedly shared how the Facetune app could completely alter your entire figure, and face, in just a few taps. I was shocked my peers had access to this technology throughout our teen years – smoothing away acne, whitening their teeth, taking inches off their waistline. And who could blame them? When Instagram likes are directly responsible for firing up 'dopamine-driven feedback loops' in our brains, the addictive posting of the best, most 'like'-able image makes even more sense. It's no wonder we continue to manipulate our images to put out what will gain positive feedback. We don't just want to look our best. If an edited photo gains more likes, we genuinely feel better.
Even more dangerously, we might come to associate this edited version of ourselves with that feeling of validation. As a result, it's hardly surprising some might attempt to replicate this in real life. According to one survey, 55% of surgeons said patients' motivation was driven by the desire to look better in selfies.
The reward goes further for influencers than your average dopamine hit; the influencer marketing industry is on track to be worth up to $15 billion by 2022. Forerunners of the industry, including the Kardashian-Jenners, have made millions. Now, with just a smartphone, you can make money off of what you look like. Jia Tolentino put it perfectly; 'in a world where women are rewarded for youth and beauty in a way that they are rewarded for nothing else […] cosmetic work might seem like one of the few guaranteed high-yield projects that a woman could undertake.'
When speaking to a self-proclaimed 'micro-influencer', I learned of an additional pressure influencers face. When you constantly put yourself onstage to capitalise on your appearance, people expect you to look that way when they meet you in-person. As someone in the public eye, there will be images taken by other people; images you haven't posed for and which you can't edit. With the rise of smartphones and social media, the expanse of images which come into the public domain has changed. One Instagram account's selling point is posting surreptitiously filmed videos of unsuspecting influencers creating content; 'Influencers in the Wild' has nearly four million followers.
When influencers are being photographed and scrutinised 24/7, they face immense pressure to look in real life how they do onscreen. When considered alongside the relentless judgement that public attention brings, of course, influencers would want to avoid inviting further comment by looking anything less than the perfect self their social media images have allowed them to project. Plastic surgery might become a way to replicate this perfection in real life which is, in turn, a kind of investment. When someone's entire livelihood is based to a large extent on how they look, visuals are everything.
This toxic expectation may have been exacerbated by cosmetic surgery's normalisation on social media. Whereas plastic surgery used to be something undergone privately, even secretly, it's increasingly a topic of open discussion. The power influencers hold is unprecedented; after Kylie Jenner revealed her use of lip fillers, one UK clinic reported a 70% rise in enquiries. Love Island and TOWIE have grown immensely in popularity over the last few years, regularly featuring cosmetically enhanced standards of beauty. Cast members amass hundreds of thousands of social media followers and are often open about the cosmetic surgery they've had to look the way they do, re-enforcing the idea that 'looking good earns money'. But also, perhaps more insidiously, money can buy good looks.
This may help people avoid holding themselves to unrealistic beauty standards, but a different problem arises in its place. I am well aware this is routed in my own insecurities, but throughout all the endorsements of various cosmetic enhancements found on social media, all I hear is 'if I can pay to look like this, you can to'. For me, this is only enhanced by the 'before and after' shots of gorgeous celebrities that regularly do the rounds. Some may find them reassuring, but to me, they scream 'with enough money, anyone can look this perfect'.
Then, of course, comes the question; what if I don't have the money? What if I can't afford to keep up with the endless list of popular surgeries and procedures and top-ups? Regular treatments, especially those undertaken by qualified medical practitioners, can be insanely expensive, and it might soon become tempting to look elsewhere. Although we have no information on which surgeon Joselyn Cano flew out to Colombia to see, the country often offers cosmetic surgeries at a lower price than elsewhere. In Miami, for example, liposuction would set you back between $4 000 and $8 000, but in Colombia, procedures are available for as little as $800.
In Colombia, plastic surgeons don't need to have studied the speciality. Rising demand for any service will always lead to attempts to capitalise on the market. Still, it's devastating when the consequences can be fatal. And this is a global problem; in the UK, the US and across the globe, botched surgery statistics can only rise as larger numbers seek treatment.
As society becomes an increasingly visual and aesthetic one, as people are increasingly defined by the way we look, we can't help but seek perfection for external and internal validation. It's clear that, for many influencers, looking average is no longer good enough. When your income relies on your appearance, it must be challenging to settle for less than flawless. This isn't to say plastic surgery is inherently bad but is there something wrong with a career that rewards it so highly? And to what extent can we demand influencers take personal responsibility to push back against this need for perfection? The problem runs much deeper, ingrained in a society that values the visual above much else, and I doubt we've seen the extent of the consequences yet.
Written by Tegan McN
Tegan is a recent graduate currently working in the non-profit sector. She spends her spare time forcing friends into long, impassioned debates on topics she knows far too little about to feel so strongly towards.
You can find her on socials at @tegan_mcn