The Death of The Natural Face

It was only a couple of days ago, while I was waiting in line at my local Starbucks with some girlfriends, that I fully grasped the extent of it. The coffee shop was jam-packed with busybodies and groups of other girls having their Sunday morning debriefs when realisation hit.

Where are all the natural faces? Where has expression gone? Natural lips and crow’s feet, laugh lines and naturally raised eyebrows - all fading into the background. The girls in that coffee shop ranged anywhere from 18 to 30, most of whom had undergone some form of enhancement to their already beautiful faces.

I believe that if there’s something you genuinely want to change about yourself and you have the means to do so, then why not? Go ahead and enhance it. But when did enhancement become the default?

I was once 19, hating my body as it changed. I was no longer the naturally slim 17-year-old I had been, and I didn’t have the lips that Instagram models did. With the rise of social media, I began comparing myself to every post on my feed. By then, Love Island had taken over UK television, and season after season, the girls in the villa fell victim to “Instagram face” - looking less and less like themselves, their features morphing into a singular, homogenised look.

It got me thinking about all the young girls growing up today, surrounded by social media from an even younger age, where filters and editing are the norm on every TikTok or Instagram post. If you're an impressionable young girl, how do you even know what’s real? What's FaceTuned, retouched, or even generated by AI? These unrealistic and unhealthy beauty standards take root early, and by the time we reach our twenties, many of us already have a list of things we want to "fix”. We fall victim to standards that were never real to begin with.

I considered lip filler. I even thought about getting a boob job because I didn’t feel good enough compared to these seemingly perfect women online. At the time, I didn’t realise that almost all of these Instagram models and influencers had undergone some form of cosmetic work. I thought I was supposed to have naturally perky boobs, a BBL-style bum, and perfectly full, pink lips.

Since 2016, there’s been a significant rise in cosmetic procedures among young women. Where perhaps 1 in 10 girls once had a lip flip or filler. Now it feels closer to 6 in 10 with Botox, lip filler, and even weight loss injections like Ozempic becoming increasingly common. I have friends who, at 18, started getting lip filler, dreaming of a breast enhancement, buccal fat removal, a lip flip, weight loss medication, and the removal of under-eye bags - all before turning 21.

So, what has caused this rise of Instagram face and the disappearance of natural beauty? And will it fade away like every other trend?

For centuries, women’s bodies and features have been in and out of fashion, while men’s have remained largely unchanged. Dad bods, gym rats, Timothée Chalamet builds - they’re all accepted and loved. Meanwhile, women have been moulded like clay throughout history to fit ever-changing ideals. But to please whom?

Even Hollywood stars have succumbed to these impossible standards. Take the gorgeous and talented Florence Pugh for example, once known for her striking natural beauty and powerful performances in period dramas like Little Women and Lady Macbeth, now rumoured to have had Botox and lip filler. Christina Aguilera is said to be on Ozempic in an attempt to turn back the clock to her 90’s body, after years of scrutiny from tabloids over her naturally changing figure. Even Grammy-winning Charli XCX has admitted how difficult it is to resist these beauty pressures as a woman in 2025.

So, do we all inevitably fall victim to the Instagram face trend? Or can we reclaim our natural faces before they, too, become a thing of the past?

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