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A few weeks ago, a friend called me in a minor panic. Someone told her she looked “tired”. That one word sent her spiraling. She zoomed in on her reflection, spotted “eye bags” (scare quotes absolutely necessary), and promptly flooded our group chat with selfies. Naturally, we all responded like good friends do—"You’re beautiful!" "You’re just sleep-deprived!" "Same here, look at my dark circles!" It didn’t work.

She spent the next few days obsessing and finally said she was considering blepharoplasty. I didn’t even know how to pronounce the word, let alone what it meant. Did I Google it? No. I went to Instagram. Like any normal person in 2025.

There were thousands of reels. Some with millions of views. Eye-bag removal surgery content is apparently thriving.

Now, I pride myself on being a pretty seasoned Internet sleuth. But maybe the algorithm has been kind to me—or I’ve just watched one too many budget horror skits and autotuned comedian rants—because I’ve somehow missed the entire beauty tutorial rabbit hole. No Korean skincare tips. No contouring hacks. Until now.

Curious (and mildly horrified), I asked my followers to send me the strangest beauty hacks they’d seen. My DMs? Chaos.

In another conversation with friends, I learned about face taping: where people literally tape their faces shut before bed, including their lips. It's unclear how one is supposed to breathe. Or wake up without a panic attack.

At this point, I started wondering: Are these beauty hacks… feminist?

Harper’s Bazaar once explored this, referencing the work of Nancy Jo Sales. She spent years interviewing teen girls about social media and their bodies, and found a worrying trend: many girls believe that sexualized selfies, filters, and cosmetic tweaks are acts of empowerment. The messaging has become so muddled that asking, “Is this actually good for your self-esteem?” is now seen as sexist. Sales calls it the dirty trick of the culture. If you question self-objectification, you become the villain.

Her book American Girls breaks down this new-age confusion, where self-surveillance is sold as self-love. And the more I looked around, the more I realised how deep that confusion runs.

A few weeks later, I casually brought this up with my dermatologist. She didn’t even let me finish the sentence before yelling, “YES! It’s a problem!” Turns out, dermatologists are holding conferences trying to decode terms like “Korean glass skin”. She still has no idea what it means.

These are teens. With baby-soft skin. Already afraid of getting old. I laughed, mostly out of disbelief. She didn’t.

But should I be surprised?

A couple of years ago, Insider created a fake TikTok account with an age set to 14. Within just eight minutes of scrolling, the account was served a video promoting a plastic surgeon in the US. Not skincare. Not makeup. Surgery. They uncovered surgeons actively using TikTok to build influence among teens—some even bragged about performing nose jobs on kids as young as fourteen.

This isn’t just anecdotal.

These young creators promoted routines packed with an average of 11 different active ingredients, often harsh ones like acids and retinoids. 

Some kids reportedly wake up at 5 am just to complete their elaborate skincare schedules. For what? For skin that was already perfectly fine to begin with.

Dr. Molly Hales, the study’s lead researcher, put it bluntly:

This isn’t just a “girl problem”, like I had thought. 

A 2025 analysis of 25 studies (14,000+ participants) found that: 70% of young women and 60% of young men reported body dissatisfaction, heavily influenced by social media. Many said it directly shaped their desire for cosmetic procedures.

In a 2024 study from Boston University, researchers found that time spent on Snapchat and Instagram directly correlated with interest in cosmetic surgery. Photo-editing apps like FaceTune and SnapSeed weren't just fun filters anymore—they were gateways to surgical consultations. The more time teens spent following celebrities or cosmetic surgeons online, the stronger the urge to “fix” their faces.

My dermatologist is in Delhi, and so are her teenage patients. I was curious to know about the stats in India, specifically. Well, India is now ranked #7 globally for aesthetic procedures. It has become the global hub for cosmetic surgery, because prices are 10–12 times lower than in the West. News reports from cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi show a disturbing new normal: twenty-somethings casually walking into clinics for multiple procedures, fueled by Instagram aesthetics and the illusion that everyone else is doing it, too.

But this isn’t just about surgery anymore. We’re in the era of “prejuvenation”. That’s the term now used for early Botox and other treatments meant not to reverse signs of aging, but to prevent them—before they happen. It's like buying insurance against a wrinkle that doesn’t exist yet. There’s no scientific consensus on whether any of this actually works, but that hasn't stopped the clinics, the influencers, or the FOMO.

The science is flimsy, but the marketing is airtight.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more dystopian—enter AI beauty.

AI rabbits. AI Shah Rukh Khan. AI-generated influencers. AI-perfect skin with no pores or texture, or tan. The standard now is not just unattainable— it’s literally not real anymore. So where does that leave teenagers with real faces, real bodies and real emotions? 

That’s what I’ve been thinking about these past few weeks. Now, maybe you will too.

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