Would You Change Your Face?

Look different = better life? With aesthetic procedures on the rise, we look to the pressures and ideals that are shaping the way we do beauty.

- Adora Wong & Lina Esa

Cleanse, tone, jab — this just might be how your skincare regime will look like in a few years. With the upward trend of cosmetic procedures, non-invasive and minimally invasive treatments are fast becoming the future of skincare. Just in 2015, reports showed that the number of aesthetic clinics in the country increased by at least seven-fold, within just 10 years. It also showed that an increasing number of Malaysians were getting treatments to enhance their features, reduce wrinkles and tone their body. The most surprising? In all of this, the ages of clients were also getting younger and younger. Once reserved for the super wealthy or just mainly for age-reversal , aesthetic procedures have stopped being about looking younger, but about looking different.

And it doesn’t help that there are bombardments of unrealistic beauty ideals from almost every source. Just recently, an online ad came under fire for being colourist and racist for the appearance of a “blackface” character as being undesirable, with her fairer complexion portrayed as “normal”. Understandably, people were enraged by the dated standards of the ad. Folklore or not, did it reveal something darker in terms of our beauty ideals?

“I feel that younger men and women now feel appearance determines the friends they have, the jobs they get and sometimes even the salaries they earn. Social media is definitely an influence, so that ’s why they’re starting treatments at a much younger age,” says Dr Anjalee Mohandas Nair, cosmetic dermatologist at Lyfe Clinic.

“Beauty standards evolve, as with any trend, and they are ever-changing. In the early 2000s you would have noticed it was about higher-arched eyebrows and plumped lips. Now it ’s more about K-Beauty: The V-shaped-face, bright and white skin, a high-bridged nose and doll-like eyes,” reveals Dr Anjalee.