One of the leading forces behind this rise is the digital system built around idealized beauty. Filters on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat create flawless, symmetrical faces that subtly distort our perception of what is “normal.” Over time, this filtered self becomes the reference point.
Women, especially teenage girls, compare their real appearance to these digital versions and feel pressured to “fix” what is perfectly natural. The result is a generation chasing an aesthetic inspired more by algorithms than biology.
Economic Interests and an Expanding
Industry
The cosmetic industry thrives on insecurity. Research studies analyze how clinics, skincare brands, and aesthetic companies invest heavily in marketing strategies that target beauty anxieties while offering quick, often temporary solutions.
With procedures becoming cheaper and more accessible, demand grows, and with greater demand comes a cycle of new products, retouches, and “upgrades,” transforming beauty into a continuous consumer practice.
In this expanding market, younger clients have become particularly valuable. Teenagers and young women represent long-term consumers, and early procedures often lead to years of follow-up treatments. As a result, the beauty industry increasingly directs its messaging toward them, presenting aesthetic intervention as necessary.
Girls Starting Younger Than Ever
The most concerning thing in the beauty industry is the number of young girls showing interest in or even going through cosmetic procedures and surgeries. The demand for plastic surgeries in Brazil has increased by 141% over the last five years, according to the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery. This early pursuit of aesthetic intervention reflects more than insecurity, it reveals how deeply beauty expectations are being internalized from an early age. This scenery leads many girls to view cosmetic procedures as a normal step toward adulthood rather than a significant medical decision.
The pressure that teenagers feel is intensified by the example set by influencers. In Brazil, for example, many teenage digital personalities openly undergo cosmetic procedures such as breast implants and rhinoplasty. These young influencers often present these surgeries as routine or even aspirational, shaping the expectations of their followers, which most are their age or younger.
The Real Impact of Cosmetic Procedures
While many women feel empowered by aesthetic interventions, the long-term consequences reveal a far more complex reality. The risk disclosure page of the American Cosmetic Association (ACA) explains that procedures carry risks such as infections, asymmetries, overfilling, and lasting impacts on skin.
However, the emotional effects can be just as significant. As treatments become part of a routine, many women develop a dependence on constant retouches, feeling dissatisfied whenever the results fade or fail to match the edited images they’re used to seeing online.
Based on a study published by the ScienceDirect portal, this emotional strain is closely tied to a mental health pattern: rising levels of anxiety, body dysmorphia, and low self-esteem among those who seek cosmetic enhancements. For younger girls, the impact is even more profound. Still forming their identity, they begin to interpret natural features as flaws, absorbing the belief that cosmetic alteration is expected by the society.
Besides that, this situation contributes to a homogenization of beauty, where faces start to look increasingly similar and diversity becomes overshadowed by imposed beauty standards.
The article above was edited by Mariana De Oliver.