4 Beauty Trends I Won’t Be Trying in 2021
You have to draw the line somewhere, especially when it’s your body and face hovering above it.
Eye Tattoos
As someone who’s avoided contact lenses in favor of their less attractive, men-repelling (courtesy of Dorothy Parker) cousin, the dreaded glasses, due to my phobia of having my eyes touched, this is one beauty trend I won’t be trying.
While Botox can lift your eyebrows by being injected into the frontal muscles and an upper eyelift can increase eyelid space, adding to a more feminine appearance, this trend is rare in that it directly engages the eyeball as a key part of the procedure and remains consistent across genders.
It’s non-traditional in that an artist performing the procedure would inject ink over the under the conjunctiva of the eyeball while trying not to pierce further below, which could result in blindness and nerve damage.
The fact is that this procedure is only ten years old; when forms of beauty modification, from dental work to rhinoplasty, date back hundreds to thousands of years, ten years is hardly enough time to study long-term complications resulting from its performance.
Moreover, it’s not a common procedure-the few artists who do perform it aren’t doing so 10 times a day, 5 days out of the week. One article I found on the procedure suggested a “leading” artist performed it less than 40 times a year. This means that in comparison to actual tattoos, eye tattoos are far less practiced, leading to more room for error, and less studied, leading to more room for long term complications.
Now, I’m not judging anyone who’s had it but I’d urge anyone considering tattooing their eyeballs to think twice, and, then, think again, and be incredibly careful when selecting an artist.
V-Line Surgery
Out of all the procedures I’m listing, this procedure can most directly improve your “beauty” as it literally changes the shape of your face. Of course, the reserve holds true and it can, potentially, lead to the most complications and horror down the line.
V-line surgery, also known as mandibuloplasty, shaves down part of the patients jawbone and chin to achieve a more feminine appearance. In Korea, it’s often done in sync with cheekbone shaving, which breaks down and shaves the patient’s cheekbones, further adding to a slimmer and more feminine, balanced facial shape.
So, I contacted plastic surgery clinics in Korea about getting V-line; the prices I was given, from Banobagi to Dream clinic, ranged from $8,000 USD to $17,000. Purse Forum, a popular Korea plastic surgery site suggested I was being charged “foreigner prices” and that the procedure normally hovers above $8,000. So be it.
But my concern wasn’t the money spent, which I’m lucky enough to have. Rather, it’s that V-line surgery is incredibly invasive, with up to six months of down time, at least. For potential patients in the US looking for this surgery, I could only find about 6 credited providers. Half of them specialized in male to female transitions for transgender patients but the other half were less informative about their expertise and how many surgeries they performed per year. When I emailed clinics, such as one based out of GA, with my concerns, they declined to reply back.
Because of the lack of widespread popularity of this procedure in the US and the potential downsides of the sugary, which range from facial paralysis to disfigurement to death, I’m extremely hesitant to support any patient thinking about getting this surgery. I suppose the alternative would be, somehow during the Coronavirus pandemic, finding a way to go to Korea to get the procedure, but I’d still strongly advise against traveling abroad to get extreme surgery, where you won’t be able to follow up with doctors should you run into any complications.
In contrast, buccal fat removal combined with Botox injected into the masseter muscle of the jaw can result in a slimmer and more feminine face at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the risk that V-line carries.
Hip Implants
Popularized in Korea, with a resurgence, in part, thanks to Instagram culture and the Kardashians, hip implants are a way to add volume and balance to your lower half. In comparison to the Brazilian Butt Lift, which is widely considered to be the most dangerous of plastic surgery procedures, hip implants admittedly carry less risk.
Still, they can result in infection, displacement, and “bottoming out” (which is when the implant drops through the skin it was originally intended to fill).
My concern about hip implants mimics my concerns about eye tattoos, to a lesser degree. It’s a fad beauty treatment and, while, certainly, it has worked for many influencers, it hasn’t been widely studied over a long period of time, the way even breast augmentation has been, meaning longtime complications remain undetected. To be fair, 88% of users on Realself.com (the most popular plastic surgery website) recommend the procedure.
However, that’s out of less than 200 reviews, which suggests a slightly self-selecting user pool. For a surgery that costs, on average, $11,000 and boasts extreme complications, I’d strongly suggest looking into other, less invasive alternatives or waiting until more research on the procedure is published.
Eyelash Transplants
Once again, my fear of all things eye-related is kicking up into high gear, even while writing this paragraph. But it’s not an unfounded fear because oculoplastic surgeons strongly advice patients not to get eyelash transplants.
Theoretically, eyelash transplants use hair via the back of your scalp to fill in sparse eyelashes by “renditioning live hair follicles”. When the only FDA approved solution for generating longer lashes, Latisse averages $100 a month, and lash extensions risk damaging your own lashes, eyelash transplants might seem like a good long-term solution to a monthly problem.
They aren’t. Firstly, the transplanted hair is from your scalp and will grow as such. Even plastic surgery websites that promote this solution as a god send admit patients will need constant uptake since as their lashes will keep growing. As someone with hip length blonde hair, the implications of this is slightly horrific. And following in the vein of this list, these sorts of extensions are relatively new and sparsely performed in comparison to hair transplants; complications ranged from eyelash misdirection to vision obstruction.
As stated by Dr. Anna Murchison:
So, all in all, there are many beauty trends. As women and men, we are pressured to try all of them. But as an advocate of doing what it takes to feel good about yourself, I’m also a strong advocate of the idea “a best defense is a good offensive”. Don’t run into any one thing because the result you end up with might be far worse than what you started out with-and, if you’re reading this, I know you’re beautiful.
