The audiovisual format has come to stay and good-looking people attract much wider audiences than the less well-endowed of us. That’s life and there’s nothing new about it. When cinema was developed in late 19th century France, the Lumières brothers noticed how pretty faces generated more interest. More interest means more money, and who doesn’t like money?
But there’s more to the picture than meets the eye…
The Treachery of Images
Everyone working in the media industry knows that there’s loads of deep insights to be drawn from great painters. One of the biggest lessons comes from Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte, who, in one of his most famous tableaux, drew a smoking pipe and simply wrote below: ‘This is not a pipe.’
Magritte’s seemingly banal painting came to be considered one of the most influential art works of the 20th century. The lesson behind it is that the picture of a pipe is not a pipe. In other words: images and reality are not to be mistaken.
Back to our audiovisual, mass-culture world, the same idea applies to something everyone agrees on: you should be very skeptical about what you see online. The audiovisual industry has made a business out of ensnaring the public with spectacular images. There’s loads of tricks in the books, from make-up and filters to image alteration. And everyone’s using them.
Gravitational Pull: Influencers and Plastic Surgery
The audiovisual industry is all about marketing. Which means it’s all about selling (except for some rare exceptions). Now, whatever you’re selling, whether it’s a product, or a film, it is much easier to sell if you’re using beauty to promote it.
There’s something about beauty that is universal. Your conception of beauty might be different from mine, and beauty ultimately is in the eye of the beholder, that’s for sure, but there’s no denying that we are all attracted to beautiful houses, beautiful landscapes… and beautiful people.
So, just like the Lumières brothers used good-looking actors and actresses to get people to care about their work, that’s why plastic surgery is a trend among influencers (we give shocking details below).
To be sure, when it comes to creating a lasting impression on the public, you better have great material to work with in the first place. Bluntly put: it’s much easier to make Angelina Jolie look great on the big screen than your grandma after a binge-drinking night out.
This doesn’t mean that first-line artists don’t undergo plastic surgery, (in fact, many of the most famous female celebrities have undergone breast surgery). The point is, if you could increase your chances of success, wouldn’t you do it?
Top Influencers Who Have Undergone Plastic Surgery
Let’s throw out a shocking statistic: out of the 30 top Instagram influencers, 18 have undergone plastic surgery. Some names most people will instantly recognize include Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Ariana Grande, Bella Hadid, Huda Kattan, James Charles and Manny Gutierrez.
There’s no doubt that ‘beauty,’ ‘fashion’ and ‘style’ influencers are expected to be better looking than influencers focusing on other categories, such as ‘cooking’, or ‘well-being’. As plastic surgery becomes gradually less of a taboo, and continues booming all over the world, we can expect more and more influencers to undergo the same procedures. Their careers depend on it.
Beware of Appearances
The main lesson to be drawn is: don’t let the media fool you. The unbelievably good-looking men and women you see in pictures are not as good looking as they are portrayed, and loads of them have gone under the knife. More and more celebrities are speaking out against sexualization and unrealistic beauty standards. Scarlett Johansson critizised the hypersexualisation of the Black Widow, her Marvel character, and The Weeknd has produced a whole album criticizing plastic surgery.
In our hyper-sexualized world, however, we’re still light years away from any sort of middle ground, and plastic surgery might just be the foreground of future genetic modification.
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