It wouldn’t be a season of Love Island if viewers weren’t discussing someone’s plastic surgery.
In June, Love Island USA contestant Vanna Einerson enjoyed a brief stint on the show before being eliminated by her castmates. But before she left, she caused a stir on social media for what many deemed “too much” facial filler. Users circulated a screenshot of her facial profile and announced their disbelief that she was only 21. Medical professionals on TikTok posted their own videos dissecting what they believed had been done to her face and detailing where her injector supposedly went wrong.
Vanna has since claimed that her swollen face was caused by an allergic reaction — but it was too late. Overnight, the short-lived reality star was branded a cautionary tale for young women tinkering with their faces at an earlier age. “Vanna from Love Island is the exact reason we need to stop telling young women that Botox and filler is preventative,” one user said in a TikTok that received over 10 million views.
This negative response to a stranger’s altered face seems ironic in a culture that isn’t exactly against cosmetic work. On TikTok, cosmetic surgery trends like “Barbie noses” and “fox eyes” go viral every few months. Meanwhile, impressive plastic surgery is gawked at and emphatically praised. Just a couple of months ago, TikTok was applauding Kris Jenner for her impressive facelift and labeling her as inspo. Even more recently, users were amazed by the drastic results of a woman who went viral after she received the same procedure in Guadalajara.
While discussions about plastic surgery have never been more open, our attitudes around it have never felt more muddled. Is plastic surgery empowering or capitulating? Why are the intentions of people who receive less-than-perfect results questioned, while the more fortunate are lauded? What does our collective disgust at women who receive “bad” cosmetic work say about us?
It’s common wisdom not to inquire about a woman’s age or comment on people’s weight (although, that’s becoming less of a thing these days, thanks to Ozempic). But it’s hard to say that, as a society, we’ve adopted any sort of coherent etiquette around discussing plastic surgery. The topic has long prompted a free-for-all of speculation and ridicule.
From Michael Jackson’s reported rhinoplasties to The Hills star Heidi Montag’s infamous trip to the plastic surgeon in 2010, celebrities “messing up” their faces and bodies has made for some of the most talked-about tabloid headlines. Meanwhile, makeover shows from the early 2000s, like The Swan, Extreme Makeover, and Addicted to Beauty, framed plastic surgery and the people who receive it as a spectacle worthy of its own genre of entertainment.
Today, plastic surgery has become much more normalized and attainable, and the way we talk about something common has shifted. Once viewed as an option only for chronically vain and insecure people, interventions like injectables, nose jobs, and veneers have now become status symbols and luxury experiences that many people aspire to have. A 2023 RealSelf Culture Report found that nearly a quarter of Americans received some sort of cosmetic work or procedure.
“It used to be that you work hard, and, as a reward, you get a handbag,” says Amy Odell, writer of the Back Row newsletter and author of the upcoming biography Gwyneth. “People would go into a Louis Vuitton to buy a bag, and it’s a mark of their accomplishment. Now it feels like we’re getting to a place where you’re buying a face.”
It’s not that everyone is necessarily undergoing drastic transformations. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ 2024 Procedural Statistics Report, while only 1.5 million surgeries were reported, approximately 28.2 million minimally invasive procedures — such as Botox, fillers, or non-surgical facial tightening — were performed that year. That’s more than twice the amount reported a decade prior.
Dallas-based plastic surgeon Dr. Raja Mohan says that he sees more patients opting for “enhancements that look natural” and offer “quick results.” He also viewed the demand for minimally invasive work as a part of a “cultural shift toward self-improvement and wellness.”
“Cosmetic surgery is often viewed as just another way to feel better about yourself, similar to going to the gym or eating healthy,” Mohan said.
With an increased demand for cosmetic work comes concerns over the ways people receive them. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 17 different cases of women who felt sick after receiving counterfeit Botox, either from an unlicensed individual or in a licensed setting. The FDA also issued a warning in 2023 about unapproved injectables that are being sold directly to the public.
Most people’s questions don’t seem to concern health and safety; rather, they focus on the aesthetic outcomes of these treatments. It seems like one of the worst offenses you can commit as a woman online is paying money to make yourself look worse. It’s the same strain of righteous ridicule that follows celebrities and influencers who’ve supposedly “ruined their bodies” by losing too much weight on Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs.
It’s not a surprise that bad or overly noticeable cosmetic work is seen as a mark on a woman’s character. Beauty culture critic Jessica DeFino, who writes The Review of Beauty newsletter, says that beauty exists as an “ethical ideal in society,” prompting a lot of judgment around how it’s obtained.
“Judgment of beauty is often entangled with judgment of naturalness,” says DeFino. “For example, studies show that we judge people who’ve undergone obvious cosmetic work as morally inferior — it’s associated with lying.”
She continues, “The underlying message is that a ‘good woman’ with ‘good work’ conceals the labor they perform to make the entangled constructs of beauty and womanhood seem natural. A ‘bad woman’ with ‘bad work’ exposes the entangled constructs of beauty and womanhood as unnatural.”
This sort of moral outrage was on display when Vanna appeared on Love Island this season — plus, it’s seen whenever the UK version of the dating show airs. Last year, the women cast members of the UK show’s 11th season instantly went viral for their noticeable cosmetic work, prompting immediate negative commentary from plastic surgeons and users alike. One doctor even posted a mocking video of himself guessing the women’s ages and the work they had done.
This backlash can also strike average people. This past May, a woman posted the results of her rhinoplasty that made her nose stick upward. Despite telling her followers that her nose was still healing, she prompted days-long discourse about Black women supposedly “ruining their faces” in pursuit of smaller noses.
Overall, it seems like the main concern around the demand for cosmetic work right now is that it’s making (some) women less attractive. Even more thoughtful criticisms around cosmetic work and toxic beauty standards seem to always be pegged to women whose work supposedly looks bad. All this creates a toxic feedback loop where women are constantly encouraged to pursue beauty at all costs but criticized if those attempts backfire.
DeFino sees more urgent problems to be addressed within our current plastic surgery boom. She says, when it comes to critiquing beauty culture, the “smartest place to focus our attention is not on the outcome of beauty work, but the input.” She says that women and gender non-conforming people, especially, are conditioned to funnel an inordinate amount of time, money, and effort “into meeting an unrealistic and oppressive standard of beauty.” It’s these messages that need to be adjusted, not necessarily their results.
For now, though, the internet seems to get more joy out of humbling women for their bad decisions. There’s no worse crime than falling into a trap society set up for you.
