Body Positivity Art If I had a dollar for each time someone suggested, unsolicited, that I “fix” my face, I may need amassed enough to fund certainly one of those costly procedures by now. My childhood dentist told me that if I didn’t do something drastic to handle my strong jawline,

I’d seem like Jay Leno by the point maturity neared. Years later, as an assistant with no medical health insurance, I used to be told by one other dentist that I “needed” cosmetic jaw surgery.

Then there was the makeup artist who, after I arrived on the set of a shoot, promised “we are able to make your nose disappear!” and proceeded to contour me to the nines. Shamefully, I used to be so blissful with the outcomes that I ended up using the photo as my skilled headshot, trying to not let any candid shots slip through the cracks.

Those memories curdled as I watched a TikTok video by a girl identifying herself as a “certified aesthetic nurse practitioner injector” explaining the adjustments she would make to Stranger Things actress and fellow prominent-jawline-haver Natalia Dyer’s face. The backlash was immediate, suggesting that something is brewing.

We may finally be moving away from the cookie-cutter “Instagram face,” the phenomenon chronicled by Jia Tolentino wherein cosmetic surgery and the filtered social media aesthetic converge somewhere throughout the bounds of the uncanny valley. Or on the very least, Gen Z appears to be swerving away from it. Based on Dazed Digital, young individuals are even pursuing reverse rhinoplasties in an try and revert to a more natural look.

Body positivity, nonetheless imperfectly arrived at, has been a clarion call on the runways for years now, but most models still have very uniform features. Why can’t face positivity be a thing, too? Bella Hadid, recalling the rhinoplasty she had at age 14, said in an interview this 12 months that “I wish I had kept the nose of my ancestors.”

And more recently, Jane Fonda, who’s been open about getting a facelift, said she regretted the procedure. Teens and twenty-somethings are embracing unfiltered platforms like BeReal. Accounts like Celebface are putting a highlight on celebrity surgical procedures, perhaps clueing in a bigger audience to the scaffolding behind the “natural beauty” we see onscreen. After which there’s TikTok, where the hashtag #nosetrend is filled with users jokingly celebrating their natural noses as a “trend.”

“Gen Z hates anything that appears contrived or inauthentic. They think the ‘likes’ thing on Instagram is, quite frankly, bullshit,” says Kirbie Johnson, a beauty reporter and co-host of the sweetness podcast Gloss Angeles. “[Given] that that’s how they operate on this social media landscape, it is smart that individuals are saying, ‘I actually don’t wish to look “perfect” anymore.

I don’t wish to try to realize this standard of beauty that’s being served to me.’” But teens and twenty-somethings aren’t the one ones pushing back against these standards—amid a growing emphasis on authenticity, people of all ages are reconsidering the urge to change their appearance.

And, as Hadid’s eloquent phrasing suggests, many individuals are embracing their unique and original features due to connection they supply to their ethnic heritage. When House of Gucci got here out, Christina Grasso, a content creator and the cofounder of eating disorder recovery support network The Chain, posted an appreciation of the solid members’ Roman noses on TikTok. “

As someone who was born with a stronger nose, I actually appreciated that, because growing up I at all times wished for a straighter, daintier nose,” she says. “That, I feel like, has at all times been the usual of beauty. It wasn’t until the past couple of years that I’ve grown to understand the nose that I actually have.

I’m thankful that I never got a nose job, because I inherited my nose from my Italian grandfather, with whom I used to be very close. He passed away a few years ago, and now I feel prefer it’s a chunk of him I’ll at all times have with me.”

Grasso finds the fixation on “straight, ski-slope, button noses” to be a really American phenomenon, and points to international celebrities like Caroline de Maigret, who own their striking features. That mindset has helped her reframe her considering.

“The way in which that I now have a look at physical beauty is similar way that I have a look at art,” she says. “Art isn’t meant to at all times be beautiful or perfect or comforting. I’m drawn to work that I find interesting or provocative, or that tells a story.”

Facial procedures aren’t the one treatments experiencing a reversal. Major celebrities are rumored, as observed by their fan bases, to have reversed their Brazilian butt lifts or removed their breast implants. To some, this could possibly be a refreshing example of embracing the body type you were born with (or your original “factory settings”); for others, it’s a troubling return to the hyper-skinny aesthetic.

Some Black creators have also found it telling that white celebrities and influencers who once appropriated Black culture are changing their bodies once more to chase a trend. “It sends a message of disposability,” TikTok creator MJ, who runs the account @kardashian_kolloquium, told i-D. “There’s a protracted history in America of that sort of treatment of Black culture and aesthetics as capital.”

Johnson also points out the centrality of cosmetic surgery even inside this growing anti-plastic-surgery narrative. “It’s an interesting dynamic: You continue to need to undergo the surgery with a view to achieve that final look. I feel it speaks to how comfortable individuals are getting with cosmetic surgery,

[that] they’re still willing to return under the knife.” Which could explain why, though rhinoplasty reversals have turn out to be more common, millennial and Gen Z-age women are still driving an overall increase in procedures, based on a report this 12 months from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Still, Grasso is emphatic concerning the indisputable fact that “bodies are usually not a trend, they’re merely a vessel. Changing one’s body or face within the name of aesthetics doesn’t change one’s life. And more importantly, it rarely brings a state of lasting contentment. If it did, I feel the hunt for perfection wouldn’t be this constant chase.”

And as I came upon, leading with a heavily altered avatar could be a trap of its own. Once I launched into my book tour, I often needed to reintroduce myself to organizers who had only seen my photo.

When my friend Maryam sent me a series of snapshots from an event I did in San Francisco, I wasn’t thrilled with the best way my nose looked in profile. But I used to be blissful, surrounded by friends and readers. I used to be signing the flyleaf of a book that I’d written. So I posted it anyway.

This text appears within the November 2022 issue of ELLE.