From Barbies to Botox
It’s 10:00 p.m. Has your daughter done her skincare yet?
Throughout the day, fourteen-year-old TikTok creator Carson Bradley applies a retinol cream twice, takes four apple cider vinegar supplements, and uses two Korean face masks to subdue premature aging. She covers the car window with construction paper during road trips to obstruct any UV rays. Bradley began incorporating anti-aging products into her skincare routine at age twelve. The TikTok video detailing Bradley’s preventative aging antics has garnered over 130,000 likes. It is one of the seven billion TikTok videos under the hashtag #antiaging.
The omnipresent reverse-aging movement has birthed many precautionary products, from radiation-emitting LED masks to face-sculpting sleep masks that could easily be seen on Hannibal Lecter. White girls have now introduced gua sha to their vocabulary. In December, Google searches for buccal fat were at an all-time high. Reddit posts such as “Im [sic] sixteen and thinking about botox because of my forehead wrinkles” and “Wrinkles as a teenager?” have proliferated. It seems that the most harrowing international crisis is the possibility of developing crow’s feet.
Young girls like Bradley are eating this up. Like a bunch of ex-machina beauty robots, they regurgitate the same sentiment celebrities use in Vogue’s “Beauty Secrets” web series about anti-aging skincare: “The earlier you start, the better.”
Today’s beauty ideals worm their way into middle and high schools as a result of pervasive social media use. At seventeen, Kylie Jenner was a brand ambassador for anti-wrinkle products.
At twenty-four, Hailey Bieber, a partner for bareMinerals Ageless Phyto-Retinol, has emphasized the importance of moisturizing your lips with peptide-containing products to prevent the onset of aging. Both celebrities have a sizable following on social media, with a demographic primarily comprised of young women aged eighteen to twenty-four, according to StarNgage.
Celebrities’ impenetrable parasocial relationships with their considerably younger fanbases encourage cosmetic procedures under the guise of female empowerment and betterment. Like Kim Kardashian, you too can have it all: pass the baby bar exam and still have time for your anti-aging vampire facial. Concurrently, young men and boys have become even more audacious in their criticisms, taking to the internet to declare that actress Margot Robbie is “mid.”
"Marketing companies are instilling the terror of aging into a population who is closer in age to ditching training wheels than joining the workforce."
Preteens going through puberty are now worried about wrinkles. #PreventativeAging is no longer just a hashtag. An employee at Sephora in Union Square, New York City, who wishes to remain anonymous, stated that anti-aging marketing tactics make younger audiences feel inclined to purchase products containing polypeptides and retinol. She has seen a rise in specific anti-aging products from companies such as The Ordinary and Drunk Elephant. The latter's products, designed in pastel color schemes with packaging that resembles toys more than moisturizers, cost upward of sixty dollars apiece. The brand released a statement in December on Instagram, contending that their products are designed for a wide array of audiences, “including kids and tweens.” Their products have only lept higher and higher on tween wishlists, while these campaigns create a certain kind of kid— one primed to become a lifelong consumer of expensive beauty products. 2024 Statista data shows that the baby and child skincare market is predicted to grow at an estimated annual rate of 7.71 percent. In 2028, the worldwide market volume is expected to reach $380 million with 160.7 million product users.
Social media beauty influencers and celebrities promote a beauty standard that the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino calls the “Instagram face," an unattainable pan racial facial mold free from wrinkles or sun spots. Tolentino writes, “The face is distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic—it suggests a National Geographic composite illustrating what Americans will look like in 2050, if every American of the future were to be a direct descendant of Kim Kardashian West, Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Kendall Jenner.”
Cosmetic surgery does have many positive attributes; look at life-saving, trans-affirming surgeries. However, young girls are being inculcated into the multi-million-dollar practice of cosmetic procedures, and that is worthy of contestation. Marketing companies are instilling the terror of aging into a population that is closer in age to ditching training wheels than joining the workforce.
As a result of anti-aging social media content, younger women and girls have become self-policing beings, hyper-fixated on every birthmark and blemish. Generation Alpha girls, born after 2010, controlled beauty sales this holiday season—according to CNBC, their Christmas lists primarily consisted of luxury skincare. TikTok storytimes erupted about young girls infiltrating Sephoras across the country, purchasing anti-aging products en masse. “...She should be in a toy store, not Sephora”, one user commented under a viral TikTok video of a ten-year-old girl shopping at the establishment.
Beauty companies have created a child consumer terrified of premature aging. Plastic surgery statistics reflect this pervasive dread. In 2021, nearly 75 percent of facial surgeons within the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reported an increase in customers under thirty. One year earlier, roughly 230,000 cosmetic surgeries and approximately 140,000 non-invasive cosmetic procedures were performed on teenagers aged thirteen to nineteen, according to WebMD.
Fayne Frey, dermatologist and author of The Skincare Hoax: How You’re Being Tricked Into Buying Lotions, Potions, & Wrinkle Cream, stated that she has observed increasing rates of younger clients issuing concerns about their physicality. “You ask your friend, or you find a celebrity that you love, and you find their endorsements, or you see some impactful ad that’s eating at your insecurity because you don’t understand what’s in that bottle,” she said. “Aging is a process. Our culture is making it into a battle so that they can sell.”
There has not been any connection to improved quality of life since the increase in cosmetic procedures amongst young girls. In fact, the opposite has been observed. About three in five teenage girls felt “persistent sadness” in 2021, says The New York Times. Instead of gifting breast implants to teen girls for their sixteenth birthdays, which can result in physical harm to teenager’s developing bodies, perhaps we should be investing in therapy.
“Stop facing the mirror so much and start facing the world,” Dr. Frey said about young skincare consumers. “There’s no way you can buy kindness in a bottle. Health doesn’t come in a bottle. Accomplishments don’t come in a jar or a tube or a syringe.”
Is it too late to take the advice Beyoncé shares in her 2013 ballad “Pretty Hurts”?
“You’re tryna fix something
But you can’t fix what you can’t see
It’s the soul that needs a surgery.”
It is alleged that Beyoncé has undergone a breast enlargement procedure and a rhinoplasty.
Glossary
Gua sha is a traditional Chinese medicine practice that involves using a smooth-edged tool to increase blood flow and create a facial lifting effect.
Buccal fat is a pad of fat in the cheek below the cheekbone. Buccal fat removal surgery is designed to accentuate cheekbone structure.
A vampire facial, or PRP facial, is a microneedling skincare treatment. The word “vampire” comes from the blood extracted from the clients themselves, which is then inserted into their faces via tiny needles to eliminate wrinkles.