{"id":14275,"date":"2021-11-15T15:57:58","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T15:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/?p=14275"},"modified":"2021-11-15T15:57:58","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T15:57:58","slug":"the-zoom-effect-cosmetic-procedures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/the-zoom-effect-cosmetic-procedures\/","title":{"rendered":"The Zoom Effect – Cosmetic Procedures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cosmetic Procedures – The \u2018Zoom Effect\u2019 \u2013 Why Cosmetic Procedures in the UK Are Surging<\/h1>\n

As lockdown looks set to lift, UK clinics are reporting an overwhelming spike in bookings for cosmetic enhancements.<\/p>\n

In February, a friend of mine had a Zoom consultation about buccal fat removal. As she explained over FaceTime, buccal fat pads are found in your mid-cheek area, and having them surgically removed accentuates the contours of your cheekbones, sculpts the lower third of the face and leaves you looking thinner. \u201cIt\u2019s what all the celebrities get,\u201d she told me confidently, after three hours of unregulated Reddit research.<\/p>\n

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The surprising part of the conversation was that I wasn\u2019t surprised. After months spent inside, staring at my own face reflected back at me through a screen, I too had identified the parts of my face I wished to alter. I just hadn\u2019t known about the numerous procedures on offer to remedy them.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Following a gruelling winter lockdown<\/a>, the UK is currently counting down to the 21st of June, when society will \u2013 we\u2019ve been told \u2013 return to normal. Once vaccinated<\/a>, we\u2019ll leave the confines of our houses to socialise. Dance, date<\/a>, have sex. But re-socialisation comes with a mental cost: fear of feeling overwhelmed in large crowds, grief about returning to life without loved ones, worries we won\u2019t act normal on dates \u2013 and anxiety about our looks. After months locked away in our tracksuits<\/a>, we want to reenter the world, but we also want to do that looking hot.<\/p>\n

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Life<\/a><\/div>\n

Botox, Fillers and ‘Instagram Face’ Are Disappearing During Lockdown<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Hannah Ewens<\/div>\n

The UK\u2019s \u00a33.6 billion-a-year<\/a> cosmetic surgery industry suffered temporarily during lockdown closures, but clinics look set to recoup those losses and then some. Since early 2020, requests for \u201ctweakments\u201d \u2013 non-surgical procedures such as Botox, filler and skin-peels \u2013 have skyrocketed<\/a>. Customers have turned to online consultations \u2013 rather than in-person ones \u2013 and bookings have filled up months in advance in anticipation of doors reopening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The rush might be partly down to a backlog, but doctors and cosmetic surgeons unanimously tell me that demand from both new and existing customers is higher than ever before. \u201cThere has been a huge rise in first-timers interested in injectable treatments,\u201d says Dr Anjali Mahto, a Consultant Dermatologist at 55 Harley Street.<\/p>\n

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Clients\u2019 demands have intensified, too. More are asking for advanced procedures \u2013 chin, jawlines, face lifts \u2013 and multiple treatments at once. \u201cPeople will now have a full face in one go,\u201d confirms Dr Nina Bal, one of London\u2019s most sought-after advanced facial aesthetics clinicians. With a current two-month wait-list, she has never been so busy in her life.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Dr Mahto thinks that some of this boom can be attributed to just how much time we\u2019ve spent looking at ourselves on screens \u2013 Zoom, Facetime, WhatsApp video calls. Due to virtual meetings and more camera-facing time, \u201cpeople have developed a heightened awareness of their perceived flaws, lines or wrinkles\u201d, Dr Mahto explains. Her clients constantly reference how their faces look on video-conferencing apps and what they want to fix to make real-life match the filtered digital lens they\u2019ve spent the past year analyzing.<\/p>\n

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) has dubbed the phenomenon<\/a> the \u201cZoom Boom\u201d or \u201cZoom Face\u201d (the pandemic\u2019s answer to \u201cInstagram Face<\/a>\u201d). TikTok might be partly behind the trend, too, with its non-stop carousel of lockdown glow-ups<\/a> \u2013 people with Gen Z-aged skin documenting their before-and-after quarantine transformations \u2013 adding to the pain for those of us who instead turned to wine, Deliveroo and the couch for comfort.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt really gross after months stuck in my apartment, and anxious at the thought of seeing people again,\u201d says Chloe*, a 31-year-old from London, who had a consultation for tear trough filler, before settling on having her first bout of Botox in her forehead and frown lines. \u201cThe idea of being able to do something to make myself feel \u2013 and look \u2013 young and fresh was very tempting \u2013 and it also worked,\u201d she says. \u201cIt actually has made me feel better.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not only women who are filling up bookings. BAAPS reports the number of men wanting consultations for cosmetic enhancements has risen by 70 percent<\/a> since early 2020. Dr Bobby Ahmed, CEO and lead medical doctor at Regent Street Clinic, says the most popular treatments for men are chin and jawline sculpting, as well as fat dissolving under the chin, due to reports of clients feeling \u201cself-conscious about the way they look on video calls, or seeing a double chin when they look at the camera\u201d.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A rhinoplasty was something Bryan, a 26-year-old who visited Regent Street Clinic in Nottingham, hadn\u2019t seriously considered until lockdown, when he found himself \u201clacking in confidence\u201d after so much camera-facing time. Rather than just physically making his nose straighter, the procedure had a profound impact on his overall wellbeing. \u201cThis was something that allowed me to feel less worried about how I appear, and more focused on regular things in life, like work, socialising and meeting new people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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Life<\/a><\/div>\n

Filler Will Make Us All ‘Perfect’. You’ll Just Need Lots, Everywhere<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Hannah Ewens<\/div>\n

10.14.19<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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During lockdown, some clients couldn\u2019t wait for clinics to reopen. Instead, many ordered needles, Botox and dermal fillers online and injected their own faces<\/a>, guided only by YouTube tutorials, says Ashton Collins, director of Save Face<\/a>, a UK government-approved register of accredited cosmetic practitioners. Others, she says, visited unregulated clinics which stayed open illegally, resulting in \u201chorrible\u201d botched jobs: \u201cWe had over 2,000 patient-reported complaints last year, and many of our accredited practitioners reported huge rises in corrective treatments.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There are a million-and-one reasons people might wish to change their appearance. But as we spend more time staring at our own faces and others\u2019 through screens, it makes sense that we\u2019d zoom in on our looks. \u201cThat many of us are coming out of lockdown with a wish to \u2018fix\u2019 ourselves by changing our bodies is part of a broader change, where beauty has become a dominant \u2013 for some, the<\/em> most dominant \u2013 value framework,\u201d says Heather Widdows, a British philosopher and author of Perfect Me<\/a><\/em>, a 2018 study of contemporary beauty norms.<\/p>\n

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Extreme stress can also make people more likely to hanker after change<\/a> (as anyone who\u2019s had a post-break-up hair transformation or impulsive stick \u2018n\u2019 poke<\/a> can attest to), as can a desire for control. And if the pandemic has been anything, it\u2019s stressful and destabilising. All of this has had an impact on the way we see ourselves: research by Uvence<\/a> found that over 6 million people in the UK believe COVID-19-related stress had caused them to visibly age by at least five years.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

All of the above has meant that not everyone who wants cosmetic enhancements is being granted them. \u201cOne in five people attending Regent Street Clinic at the moment are being rejected for treatment, having been identified as unsuitable, mostly due to concerns we have about their mental health,\u201d says Dr Ahmed.<\/p>\n

Some clinics are referring wannabe patients to therapists and psychologists<\/a> instead. \u201cOur job is to make sure we get to the root of the cause and address the underlying issues at play,\u201d says Dr Sheri Jacobson, Clinical Director at Harley Therapy.<\/p>\n

As for my friend, she\u2019s decided her brief exploration into spending \u00a33,000 on plastic surgery to look more like an A-lister was mostly due to a pandemic-induced Reddit rabbit hole than anything else. For plenty of others, though, over the next few months, lockdown definitely won’t be the only thing that ends up being lifted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cosmetic Procedures – The \u2018Zoom Effect\u2019 \u2013 Why Cosmetic Procedures in the UK Are Surging As lockdown looks set to lift, UK clinics are reporting an overwhelming spike in bookings for cosmetic enhancements. In February, a friend of mine had a Zoom consultation about buccal fat removal. As she explained over FaceTime, buccal fat pads Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14278,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[54,661,863,1087,8,1],"tags":[1201,30,1202],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14275"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14277,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14275\/revisions\/14277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.nahtnow.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}