On plastic surgery, Ozempic, and body modification as body horror.
Stage 1 – Desire
The caricature of the “mad scientist” type hails from the character Victor Frankenstein, from Mary Shelley’s eponymous 1818 novel. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is widely regarded the beau ideal of both the science fiction and classic Gothic genre, concerned with themes of fear and haunting, featuring religious symbolism, images of forgotten castles and dilapidated ruins, and plenty of stark contrasts. Victor Frankenstein creates his monster because he wants to aid the betterment of humankind, through a thorough understanding of the secrets of life and death. Or so he tells himself. This is his desire.
A few months into 2024, I stand in the fluorescent light in the bathroom of my dilapidated East London flat and brush my teeth facing the medicine cabinet mirror. I suddenly notice, with repulsion, how yellow my teeth look in the light. I don’t think much about how I haven’t had this thought while looking in any other mirror. I am immediately convinced of this one singular reality — where I have a flaw and it must be dealt with. I am haunted by the mistake I perceive in myself and wish to rectify it. This was my desire.
Stage 2 – Intervention
In The Substance, directed by Caroline Fargeat, Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle — a television fitness instructor, and, too, a woman who has been newly informed that she has aged out of being the person she wants to be. Elisabeth resorts to using a new experimental procedure called ‘The Substance,” which promises her a newer, better, younger, more beautiful, more perfect version of herself. In this story, Elisabeth is both the mad scientist and the Creature. She experiments with herself but also creates a new life form, Sue. In this sense, The Substance takes the notion of a “new self” literally.
Moore’s presence in the film is particularly poignant as the actress has previously been mocked and ridiculed for the cosmetic interventions she has undertaken. In 2021, after walking for Fendi at Paris Fashion Week, she was described as “unrecognizable.” Not the kind of unrecognizable the public enjoys. The language we use about women who have had plastic surgery, and other cosmetic interventions, is to describe ruins. She ruined her face. What I find hard to understand is why we only say this about the result and not the procedure itself. There is an understanding that nobody can “ruin” their body or face into being better. I’m not trying to be deliberately obtuse, I understand the difference we are referring to, but I think the narrative that cosmetic intervention is only detrimental when it is seen to have “failed” obscures the real, complex, questions at hand. It is far too easy to say that something is good when we like it and bad when we don’t.
There are three main imagined aims of cosmetic intervention – to change, to preserve, and to unveil. To change – to go from one thing to another, for example using Ozempic to lose weight. To preserve – to stop time and remain or return to a younger version of oneself, for example, Botox to prevent and smooth wrinkles. To unveil – the idea that there is a more beautiful version of yourself hiding behind the current version of yourself, for example, a nose job to “straighten” the bridge. But the truth, of course, is you cannot preserve, or unveil, without also committing to change. All of these aims are different, but the core aim is the same – to fix. Something is missing, something is broken, something is to be improved upon, something is to be rectified.
Stage 3 – Reveal
In a previous HALOSCOPE essay, Moodbored, I wrote how in the practice of digital moodboarding the public gets to play pretend with mascots of wealth and their possessions. I find this to also be increasingly true in the conversation around cosmetic surgery. We, the public, enjoy living vicariously through our celebrity counterparts and this extends into the arena of changing appearances. We exact ourselves over their looks. We become the chorus pointing out the blatant tragedies and ironies as we see them fit. The buccal fat removal discussion from a few years ago saw this come to a frustrating head — where every day there seemed to be a new woman on our screens being marked with a big ugly F. We discuss fresh facelifts and newly injected baby Botox with irreverence. Do we like it? Do we not like it? When a woman intervenes in her appearance, she becomes free game. We are all suddenly allowed to track what she does to her body, and when we find her at prime vulnerability, we hunt and dissect. There is nobody else to blame so we blame the woman who has the ruin, the stark contrasts, the haunting, on her face. The truth is when a celebrity goes under the knife, they’re never planning on coming out the other side “worse.” The general public often can’t afford these procedures, so we live vicariously through faces of fame. All the while telling, and perhaps promising, ourselves that we would never end up like the celebrities we revile for what we deem their ill-advised choices. The end scene of The Substance mimics this endpoint of cosmetic intervention. Elisabeth’s desire for youth and beauty has met its monstrous end — and the audience who she did it all for, that used to love her, viscerally hates her. They call her a freak, doused in her blood. This is why I find it hard to make a definitive judgment on the place of cosmetic surgery in our society — because the victims of it so often become the transgressors, the mocked, the ridiculed. The creatures. The haunted. Look at her: she ruined her face.
Stage 4 – Fix
The mad scientist trope is “mad” in their morality — an unethical character that takes things too far, who jettisons the ethical and moral values society prioritizes over their own clashing desires: progress or perfection. The female celebrity who sacrifices her “natural” beauty in an attempt to achieve a better kind of beauty is regarded in the same sense. But this character, when female, is seen less as evil or dedicated, and more like a fool. Hoisted by her own petard. So, where is the line between aesthetic enhancement and extreme transmogrification drawn? Everyone seems to know and agree in hindsight, but these poor celebrities just keep falling short of what is so obvious to us. In a sense, we end up pitying them, regarding them as cautionary tales, the same way we pity Frankenstein’s monster, and ward ourselves with Gothic admonition. When have we taken it too far? These are the questions we are constantly trying to answer. Ozempic hit the culture like a nuclear bomb. A miracle weight loss drug — something that previously would’ve been regarded as pure science fiction. And the question on everyone’s lips was once again: is this going too far?
This summer, at the age of 22, I undertook my first “permanent” cosmetic procedure — I did end up having my teeth whitened. I am quite a prude when it comes to fillers, plastic surgery, or other appearance-enhancing procedures. I just can’t shake the feeling that any industry that profits off of, mainly, women’s insecurities is deeply, deeply, deeply evil. And I can’t help but feel that having these procedures done is not empowering — it is barely even committed with free will. And so this is why when having my teeth whitened, which is obviously a quite minimally-invasive procedure regardless, I felt like a massive hypocrite. You see: I don’t really have a good understanding of where I even think the line should be drawn. I struggle with makeup. I struggle with skincare. I even struggle with fashion, occasionally. Because I believe in the power and freedom of women and abhor anything that can, will, or does suppress us.
And I find it theoretically difficult. In theory, I love the fact that we can do anything to and for ourselves. I love the idea of body modification. I love the idea of tattoos and piercings. I love the idea of gender-affirming surgeries. These are all procedures that figure in the “unveil” category. Then there is a stranger middle ground that complicates things: braces. Accutane. Lasik. Procedures that are not commonly thought of as cosmetic but often align more with the medical genre of human intervention into appearance. These procedures figure in our minds more as normality leaveners than as “enhancers.” They are commonly thought to swiftly fix — but to be necessarily fixing “real” flaws, not imagined ones or deeper personal insecurities. They are aspiring towards a certain level of normalcy. But where, and how, do we define normal?
This is why I personally disagree with the common notion that minimally-invasive procedures, like fillers, used to move our facial features around by mere millimetres, are somehow “better” than larger procedures, like breast augmentation. Or anything that will make you look, in the public’s opinion, “worse.” Because the “minimal” is a lie. If you are changing your appearance, you are changing your appearance. I have a certain respect for a cosmetic procedure that doesn’t seek to “perfect” someone into normalcy — and instead seeks to make one different. I have an adoration for women who use cosmetic surgery to create a new self that is not aspiring for the ideal version of “normal.” The freaks, one could say. (Though I remain aware that, at the end of the day, these women are still contributing to the economic machine that keeps the wheels of cosmetic surgery turning, and subsequently normalising the act of paying vast amounts of money to change your appearance). The filler industry feels, to me, more like a façade. A get-perfect-quick scheme. The lipstick economy becomes the filler economy. Heal your life temporarily by amending an imagined ruin in your face.
Similarly, questions of medical intervention bring to mind different kinds of bodily autonomy, like abortion rights, which are under threat in the US and beyond. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, despite being largely ethically opposed to cosmetic interventions, I cannot simply agree with the idea that being untouched, pure, or “natural” is better. This line of aesthetic theory takes us very quickly into very treacherous territory. And I don’t think it's a coincidence that the “natural” ideal often follows a conservative line of thinking. Even a comedic phrase like “big naturals” emphasizes God-given features as superior. But I also don’t believe that this argument not being true means the opposite is inherently true. Take, for example, the bizarre world of “looksmaxxing,” which rarely encourages full surgical interventions and is more focused on daily “soft” interventions like diet, exercise, and facial exercises like “mewing” or gua sha. “Looksmaxxing” is another intervention process that emphasises the “unveil” aim. Find and bring forth a better self with relatively “natural” steps. But anyone who has followed the “looksmaxxing” rabbit hole knows it is anything but a wholesome, or even sane, approach to appearance, being rooted in incel communities.
When I had my teeth whitened, this paradox became incredibly clear to me. I liked living in the bubble where I was somehow natural, but when I was having bleach applied to the inside of my mouth, to the teeth I have carried around in my face for, essentially, my whole life, I was forced to reckon with the question of how this was in any way different on a moral and ethical level, and in any way more “natural” than other cosmetic interventions.
Stage 5 – Cha-ching!
I think the conversation around cosmetic surgery is worthless when it leaves out the fact of profit. These procedures cost money — and this money is gained by someone. Therefore, there is profit to be made in inspiring insecurities in others. The cosmetic surgery and injectables industry is anticipated to exceed $59.54 billion by 2030. The age of the mad scientist doesn’t come to fruition without the mad scientist, or the mad scientist’s assistant, or the mad manufacturing scientist, or the mad scientist’s social media manager. No purchase exists outside of the web of capitalism — and that includes cosmetic procedures. We can’t afford to pretend they do.
So, if we are to draw this metaphor — The Age Of The Mad Scientist — who is really Victor Frankenstein? The conversation around cosmetic surgery is thorny. It includes several different parties with warring desires within them. There is no clear villain slaving away in their lab, bringing life to our worst desires. As for the victims, personally, I always end up thinking about the Demi Moores, the Pamela Andersons, the Kristen Davises, the Janet Jacksons. Women who are mocked for having work done, and eventually branded as scary and ruined for wearing the haunting of this twisted system on their faces. A system they are only trying to appease — to appease us, such Gothic readers. I like to imagine a world where we can embrace cosmetic intervention and body modification as a practice uncomplicated by knee-deep societal tensions, a world where being your own mad scientist can truly be empowering, but I just don’t think this is that world.
Stage 6 – Desire
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ends with Victor Frankenstein wishing he would have destroyed his creation. This is his dying desire.
Immediately after having my teeth whitened, I freaked out. I was so befuddled by this decision I had made to permanently alter my appearance that I vowed to never do it again. The hypocrisy of it sat in me like molten lava. The irreversibility was haunting. A few weeks after I have my teeth whitened, I get used to it. The entire world that makes way to the process begins to normalise in my mind. I look at my teeth and think I could’ve gone lighter. I think maybe in a year. Maybe in a few years. Maybe before a special occasion. The intervention has not curbed my insecurity — it has only further convinced me of its one singular reality, where I have a flaw and it must be dealt with. I am haunted by the mistake I perceive in myself and wish to rectify it. This is the desire. 🌀