Radiant and fresh-faced, the girls who sat chatting to me had the flawless complexions that older women try so hard to emulate with expensive fillers. I was meeting them to research my new book about the modern beauty industry and its impact on young women. You might imagine that, in their early teens, they were too young to be in the thrall of companies selling wrinkle-smoothers and plumping injections.
Sadly, however, the very opposite was true. These girls had already been brainwashed by a pernicious — and lucrative — modern beauty aesthetic that insists you cannot be truly attractive unless you’ve had some sort of artificial enhancement. Mia*, 14, quietly admitted: “I don’t really go outside after school because I don’t want people to see my real face any more than they already have to.
” Her seven friends, also 14, agreed that until they were old enough to correct their perceived ‘flaws’ via surgery or injectables they would rather people saw heavily filtered images of them on social media. They were so convinced their naturally pretty faces were ugly, they wanted to hide away until cosmetic procedures made them fit to be seen in public. Hearing this was certainly upsetting — but I wasn’t shocked.
Until a few years ago, I worked in a marketing and branding job in the beauty industry. I had seen firsthand the irresponsible methods used by some firms to encourage such tragic insecurity among young women before they ruthlessly cashed in. So cynical did .