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[woman 1] There is definitely
{\an8}a look that is very on trend
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{\an8}and you see it anytime you open
SnapChat or Instagram.
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-[woman 2] The Coca-Cola body.
-[man 1] Shaped like a guitar.
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[woman 3] I think a lot of people
think the Instagram body is hourglass.
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And I think it's actually
more of the spoon shape.
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[narrator] And that body is often paired
with a certain kind of face.
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[man 2] Big lips, the fox eyes.
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[woman 1] A slim little nose.
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[woman 4] I guess like Kylie Jenner
and like that kind of group.
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[woman 5] I definitely think
the Instagram look is not real.
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[narrator] It depends
what you mean by real.
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It's true, some of those faces
may have been altered with preset filters
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{\an8}or using apps like Facetune,
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{\an8}where you can make
minute tweaks to your photo,
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{\an8}resizing, smoothing,
shifting the very structure of your face.
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There are all of these slight tweaks
that we've been able to see on ourselves.
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And more and more people
with the access to pursue them
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are starting to adopt that face
for themselves in real life.
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[narrator] The number
of cosmetic procedures
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has nearly doubled in the last decade.
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They've gotten safer,
cheaper, and more sophisticated.
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And the patients receiving them
have gotten younger and more diverse.
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It feels like we're moving toward a future
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where our appearances
are fundamentally changeable.
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{\an8}So, is that a bad thing?
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{\an8}And, is plastic surgery
changing the way we see ourselves?
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You will be an entirely different man
by the time the healing is complete.
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[man] A fountain of youth at the end
of a relatively painless syringe.
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[woman] But there's no guarantee
it will all end in smiles.
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I think they need to expect
a little bit of pain.
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Well, it's a matter of looking
the best you can for as long as you can.
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It makes no difference what I'm feeling.
My face never changes!
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[laughter]
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[Cattrall] The things we do to look good
exist on a spectrum.
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On one end,
you have things like taking a shower,
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wearing makeup, dyeing your hair.
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That's long been considered good.
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Enhancing your natural beauty.
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As soon as you start looking
at the language of beauty,
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beauty talk is moral talk.
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It's just got morality all over it.
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So, "You deserve it. You're worth it."
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"Don't let yourself go.
You shouldn't have let yourself go."
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Anytime you get shame,
blame, praise, reward,
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then you've got a moral claim going on.
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[Cattrall] Then,
on the other end of the spectrum,
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things are riskier,
more painful, more permanent.
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And people make moral judgments
about that too.
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Take The Swan, a 2004 reality show
that whipped America into a frenzy.
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The show knew it was pushing boundaries,
calling itself…
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The most unusual competition ever devised.
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[Cattrall] A team of surgeons,
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plus a cosmetic dentist,
therapist, trainer, and life coach,
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crafted self-described
ugly ducklings into swans,
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and then pitted them against each other
in a final beauty pageant.
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Viewers loved it.
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Millions tuned in every week.
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But reviewers,
they reacted with near-universal horror.
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They called it ghastly,
ridiculous, hurtful, and repellent.
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It even made it onto CNN Primetime.
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You don't make them ugly.
And you don't even make them mediocre.
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I mean, you dress 'em up,
and, you know, you give them breasts.
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Unfortunately, some people
reacted negatively to the show.
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[Cattrall] Cindy was
a contestant on Season 1.
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[Ingle] I'll start from the top.
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So I had an eyebrow lift.
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I had cheek implants.
I had some fat removed under my eyes.
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I had buccal fat removal,
chin reduction, and a mini face-lift.
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Breast augmentation.
Then I had a tummy tuck.
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And light liposuction on my inner thighs.
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I started giving plastic surgery
more thought
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after my second child.
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My body had went through
such a physical change.
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After I finished nursing my son,
my breasts were just really misshapen.
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No matter how much exercise
or crunches, sit-ups I would do,
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I was not losing my baby belly.
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[Cattrall] But they were a young family
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and couldn't spare the money
for cosmetic surgery.
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So when The Swan had
a casting call commercial on the radio,
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at that point,
I knew that I needed to at least try.
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-[Cattrall] And she has no regrets.
-I'm very happy with the results.
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That freaked me out.
I had a teeny, tiny waist.
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I'd never really had a waist before.
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Love my nose. Love my nose.
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I was really happy that day.
It's kind of cool.
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[Cattrall] After that season came out,
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half a million women
applied to be on the next one.
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More people than live
in the entire country of Iceland
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were willing to go on television
to get plastic surgery.
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In the early 2000s,
our idea of extreme was changing.
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But this whole spectrum
had actually been shifting gradually
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for almost a hundred years.
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[loud gunfire]
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World War I was like
nothing humanity had ever seen before.
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Modern weaponry, tanks, machine guns,
poison gas killed millions,
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reduced cities to rubble,
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and left in their wake
a generation of injured soldiers,
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many of them with faces disfigured
by shrapnel and bullets.
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Surgeons had never seen
injuries like these before.
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So to fix them, they had to get creative.
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Crafting noses
out of cartilage borrowed from ribs,
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{\an8}reforming shattered jaws
with bits of leg bone,
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and filling in hollowed cheeks
with patients' own fat and tissue{\an8}.
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Surgeons spent years
working on the same patients,
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striving to make them
look like themselves again.
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And if they couldn't do that
with flesh alone,
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they hired actual artists
to craft prosthetic masks.
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Their work wasn't just about function.
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It was about form.
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One of those World War I surgeons
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is now sometimes known
as the father of aesthetic surgery.
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As Joseph wrote,
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"Someone who simply wants
a normal appearance,
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wishes to be inconspicuous,
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should not suffer the odium of vanity."
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He didn't just treat the wounded.
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{\an8}Joseph was Jewish,
and so were many of his patients,
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{\an8}who wanted him to erase
the markers of their ethnicity,
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{\an8}allowing them to be inconspicuous
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{\an8}in a society that was hostile
towards them.
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{\an8}He helped put plastic surgery
on the spectrum
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as something you could do
for aesthetics alone.
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In the mid '20s,
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half of America was going
to the movies every week
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and lots of budding stars
were having their faces shuffled
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and reassembled for the screen,
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because those faces
were their stock-in-trade.
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Comedian Fanny Brice
famously got a new nose,
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and heartthrob Rudolph Valentino
had his ears reshaped.
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In 1924, a newspaper even launched
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what may have been
the first plastic surgery contest.
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A search for the homeliest girl
in New York,
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so they could turn her misfortune
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into a fortune.
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{\an8}A woman named Jacqueline Naagel won,
and it worked.
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{\an8}She scored a movie contract
and moved to California.
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And in the decades since,
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plastic surgery has only gotten cheaper,
safer, and more accessible.
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There are more providers.
There are more types of providers.
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Different price points.
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It's become like other services,
so you can find it across a range.
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What is the difference
between routine and extreme?
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Is it about the time taken?
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Is it about whether you can do it at home
or it requires an expert to do it for you?
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Is it about how risky and painful it is?
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Usually, all we mean is what we would
do ourselves, or would like to do.
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[Cattrall] {\an8}Is a push-up bra extreme?
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How about braces or laser hair removal?
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Cutting off a mole?
Freezing off your fat? Fillers? Botox?
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[Widdows] It wasn't very long ago
when Botox was viewed
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as this crazy thing
that mad celebrities were doing,
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injecting poison into their faces.
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00:09:03,084 --> 00:09:04,919
Oh, it's changed tremendously.
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I think, before my time,
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00:09:06,921 --> 00:09:09,507
as a plastic surgeon,
there was a lot of stigma.
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00:09:09,590 --> 00:09:13,177
But in general, now what I see
is there's less guilt feeling,
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there's less secrecy.
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[woman] Prior to having children,
I had a shape.
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In my twenties, I had a nice shape.
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When I…
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I did show the doctor my wish pic,
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but it was me younger.
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I started to notice changes.
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My eyes started to look a little bit
more heavy, a little bit more tired,
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and I didn't feel that way,
I didn't feel tired.
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I felt great, but I looked tired,
and it bothered me.
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I had gynecomastia as a child.
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Uh, and then, when I got older,
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I sort of just had a double mastectomy,
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which is removal of breast tissue
and fat tissue.
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I believe that if you look good,
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everything is gonna come
smoother in your life.
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I just always noticed women
who would walk by,
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and I was always like,
"That woman's so beautiful."
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It was always large-breasted women.
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[Cattrall]
Everyone's spectrum is different.
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00:10:08,733 --> 00:10:12,028
It depends on who you are
and the culture you come from.
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[Widdows] There are places
where cosmetic surgery is just routine,
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a rite of passage.
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[Cattrall] Like South Korea,
where one in three women in their twenties
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have gotten work done.
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And there's a special name
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for surgeries undertaken
just to improve your job prospects.
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Or in Brazil.
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[Widdows] There's a narrative
about the right to beauty
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and there's a whole thing about
how the mistress, no more than the maid,
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should have that right.
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[Cattrall] And, in part,
that's thanks to this man, Ivo Pitanguy,
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a world-renowned surgeon
to the rich and famous.
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A lucrative business.
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He bought his own private island.
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But he also operated
on the destitute for free,
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earning him the nickname
"The pope of plastic surgery,"
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and the status of a national hero.
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Here he is at Carnival in 1999,
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surrounded by a sea of dancers
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atop his very own elaborate float.
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Pitanguy was a pioneer.
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He developed techniques for tummy tucks
that hid scarring below the bikini line,
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00:11:19,345 --> 00:11:22,515
championed less invasive mini face-lifts,
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00:11:22,598 --> 00:11:25,434
and developed the Brazilian butt lift.
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00:11:26,519 --> 00:11:31,691
The BBL is a procedure where fat is sucked
from elsewhere in your body,
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usually the thigh or belly,
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00:11:33,693 --> 00:11:36,362
and injected into your butt.
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00:11:36,987 --> 00:11:40,574
Back in the '80s,
Playboy Brazil published a cover story
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00:11:40,658 --> 00:11:43,577
that called butts a national passion.
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00:11:44,161 --> 00:11:45,454
And decades before that,
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Brazil's contestant in the 1954
Miss Universe Pageant, Martha Rocha,
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00:11:50,835 --> 00:11:54,171
had more curves
than the average woman on that stage.
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[announcer 1]
Miss Brazil is a stunning stepper
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00:11:56,173 --> 00:11:58,592
as the contest narrows down
to the finalists.
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00:11:58,676 --> 00:11:59,802
[Cattrall] She lost.
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00:11:59,885 --> 00:12:01,470
[announcer 2] And it's Miss USA.
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00:12:01,554 --> 00:12:04,432
[Cattrall] Because the judges said
her hips were too big.
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00:12:05,391 --> 00:12:08,060
I remember when white women
were scared to have fat asses.
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00:12:08,144 --> 00:12:11,021
Like I remember
that being part of history.
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00:12:11,105 --> 00:12:13,566
Of Sir Mix-A-Lot's infamous song.
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00:12:13,649 --> 00:12:16,277
♪ I like big butts and I cannot lie ♪
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00:12:16,360 --> 00:12:19,155
The skit at the beginning,
it captures that perfectly.
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00:12:19,238 --> 00:12:22,783
Oh, my God. Becky, look at her butt.
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00:12:22,867 --> 00:12:27,246
And what really helped to mainstream that
was Kim Kardashian.
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00:12:28,622 --> 00:12:32,835
And the rest of her sisters,
one by one, kind of slowly following suit.
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00:12:33,544 --> 00:12:37,882
[Cattrall] And the BBL became
the fastest-growing procedure by far.
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00:12:38,466 --> 00:12:41,886
{\an8}Brazil's passion for big butts
has gone global.
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00:12:41,969 --> 00:12:44,889
But if you read {\an8}Playboy for the articles,
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00:12:44,972 --> 00:12:47,183
you'd have found a much darker story.
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00:12:47,683 --> 00:12:50,811
A sociologist claimed
the curvy beauty ideal
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00:12:50,895 --> 00:12:53,647
could be traced back
to enslaved African women
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00:12:53,731 --> 00:12:56,984
who bore the children
of their white slave owners,
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00:12:57,067 --> 00:13:03,407
resulting in eugenic aesthetic experiments
that avoided Africanoid exaggerations.
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00:13:03,908 --> 00:13:05,075
In other words,
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00:13:05,159 --> 00:13:06,452
a Black woman's butt
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00:13:06,952 --> 00:13:09,872
on a body that otherwise looked white.
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00:13:09,955 --> 00:13:14,335
The obsession with big butts
is definitely appropriative,
235
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and it makes it so that now Black women
who do not have that body type
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are somehow seen as, like, less Black,
237
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or less attractive as Black women.
238
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Wish me luck.
239
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I would see my boyfriend
scrolling through social media sometimes
240
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and the type of girls
that he would like their pictures,
241
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it didn't reflect what I looked like
or what my body type looked like.
242
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And I just felt like,
"Here's a lane for me to get it done.
243
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Why not fix something that I don't like?"
244
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I just finished my surgery, guys.
245
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[nurse] A little pain, sure. Without pain…
246
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You know, what is beauty?
247
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What is beauty without pain?
248
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[Cattrall] And then there's
{\an8}the Instagram face,
249
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{\an8}which is basically a mash-up of features
borrowed from different ethnicities.
250
00:14:05,219 --> 00:14:09,056
{\an8}Those slanted fox eyes
and big, pillowy lips
251
00:14:09,139 --> 00:14:12,560
have been mocked
in racist caricatures for centuries,
252
00:14:12,643 --> 00:14:14,645
and people now pay for them,
253
00:14:14,728 --> 00:14:18,440
getting their temples pulled back
with little dissolvable threads,
254
00:14:18,524 --> 00:14:22,361
and their lips plumped
with a few syringes of filler.
255
00:14:23,112 --> 00:14:25,948
With more people being able to pursue
256
00:14:26,448 --> 00:14:30,661
this body type that has been
heavily influenced by tech
257
00:14:30,744 --> 00:14:33,080
and by social media and by entertainment,
258
00:14:33,163 --> 00:14:37,877
the expectation
on what you should look like,
259
00:14:37,960 --> 00:14:42,172
because we now know what you can look like
based on the possibilities,
260
00:14:42,256 --> 00:14:44,174
is getting smaller and smaller.
261
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That window is getting more narrow.
262
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What is normal is becoming narrower
and is converging.
263
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And that's new.
We've never had that before.
264
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So, for instance, body hair.
265
00:14:56,186 --> 00:15:00,441
If you go back a little bit in the West,
you find it's much more of a social norm.
266
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[Cattrall] Some people removed
their body hair. Some didn't.
267
00:15:04,778 --> 00:15:07,948
Iconic beauty Sophia Loren
often chose not to.
268
00:15:08,824 --> 00:15:12,202
But then hairlessness became the standard.
269
00:15:12,286 --> 00:15:16,123
We've normalized a hairless body,
and we've done that globally.
270
00:15:16,206 --> 00:15:19,877
We forget it's beautification,
it's artifice.
271
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[Cattrall] It's a feedback loop.
272
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We make choices
to bend to the beauty ideal
273
00:15:26,008 --> 00:15:27,676
and that helps reinforce it,
274
00:15:27,760 --> 00:15:31,805
moving the target of perfection
even further out of reach.
275
00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:37,686
[Kat] Growing up, I was kind of obsessed
with the Victoria's Secret Angels.
276
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Like, "Wow, look at these women."
277
00:15:40,022 --> 00:15:43,651
It was like, "Va-va-voom,"
and I just wanted to look like that.
278
00:15:45,152 --> 00:15:50,157
So I do struggle with wondering,
if Victoria's Secret never existed,
279
00:15:50,240 --> 00:15:52,743
if I had never seen those runway shows,
280
00:15:52,826 --> 00:15:54,995
would I still have been boob obsessed?
281
00:15:55,079 --> 00:15:57,081
Would I have wanted a breast augmentation?
282
00:15:57,790 --> 00:16:01,710
[Cattrall] Our beauty ideal
is now shaped by plastic surgery,
283
00:16:01,794 --> 00:16:05,255
which means
it's harder to achieve without it.
284
00:16:06,048 --> 00:16:09,259
Things that were once extreme
have become routine.
285
00:16:09,343 --> 00:16:11,011
And at some point,
286
00:16:11,095 --> 00:16:15,224
things that are routine
can start to feel required.
287
00:16:15,307 --> 00:16:18,644
But it's like anything else.
If everybody dyes their hair
288
00:16:18,727 --> 00:16:23,023
and you just have white hair
at a certain age, are you an outlier?
289
00:16:23,107 --> 00:16:24,233
Yes.
290
00:16:24,316 --> 00:16:26,527
[Cattrall] And pretty much
everyone would say
291
00:16:26,610 --> 00:16:29,279
dyeing your hair
is less extreme than surgery.
292
00:16:29,780 --> 00:16:32,116
Especially something like the BBL.
293
00:16:32,825 --> 00:16:35,911
There's a risk
of injecting fat in the wrong place,
294
00:16:35,995 --> 00:16:39,081
releasing it into your bloodstream,
where it can stick together,
295
00:16:39,164 --> 00:16:42,042
blocking arteries in your brain or lungs,
296
00:16:42,126 --> 00:16:45,337
leading to infection, stroke, or death.
297
00:16:46,380 --> 00:16:48,424
There's something strange going on there,
298
00:16:48,507 --> 00:16:53,178
as we take practices
that are deeply harmful and risky
299
00:16:53,262 --> 00:16:56,015
and yet see them as benefiting ourselves.
300
00:16:56,098 --> 00:17:00,227
It is constraining,
but it does also provide some joy.
301
00:17:01,937 --> 00:17:05,315
[Cattrall] Researchers have tried
{\an8}to measure the benefits of plastic surgery
302
00:17:05,399 --> 00:17:07,526
and results have been mixed.
303
00:17:08,152 --> 00:17:10,446
But one roundup
of some of the best studies
304
00:17:10,529 --> 00:17:14,742
found that, overall,
it does seem to improve quality of life.
305
00:17:15,284 --> 00:17:18,120
How much though, depends on the surgery.
306
00:17:19,038 --> 00:17:21,498
Plastic surgery allows some people
307
00:17:21,582 --> 00:17:24,084
to maybe exist in the world
a little bit easier.
308
00:17:24,168 --> 00:17:25,377
For some folks,
309
00:17:25,461 --> 00:17:29,923
plastic surgery is a way
to affirm their gender identity.
310
00:17:30,466 --> 00:17:33,719
[woman] I had my brow bone shaven down.
I had a brow lift.
311
00:17:33,802 --> 00:17:36,096
I had a nose job,
and I also had my chin done.
312
00:17:37,264 --> 00:17:42,102
Surgery helps you feminize and helps you
become the woman you want to be, but it's…
313
00:17:42,770 --> 00:17:44,229
It's so much more than that.
314
00:17:46,190 --> 00:17:49,068
The more passable I am
as a cisgendered woman,
315
00:17:49,151 --> 00:17:51,528
the more safe it is
to walk down the street
316
00:17:51,612 --> 00:17:53,155
or to just live a normal life.
317
00:17:53,238 --> 00:17:57,534
We need to stop thinking
about self-worth and self-value
318
00:17:57,618 --> 00:18:03,040
and self-confidence
as these arbitrary ideals.
319
00:18:03,707 --> 00:18:09,088
I often say that I'm not in the business
of making people look better.
320
00:18:09,171 --> 00:18:12,508
I'm in the business
of making people feel better.
321
00:18:12,591 --> 00:18:17,387
I'm more open to putting myself out there.
I'm more open to meeting new people.
322
00:18:17,471 --> 00:18:19,807
I've made more friends, I think.
323
00:18:19,890 --> 00:18:24,561
And that comes from
me just feeling better about myself.
324
00:18:24,645 --> 00:18:25,979
Just feeling stronger.
325
00:18:26,063 --> 00:18:29,358
It really is freeing, because I know that,
326
00:18:30,359 --> 00:18:32,945
every day, it's only gonna get better
327
00:18:33,445 --> 00:18:38,117
and I'm just gonna become a thousand times
more confident than I ever have been.
328
00:18:38,700 --> 00:18:44,414
It just made me more confident
in every aspect of my life.
329
00:18:44,498 --> 00:18:48,502
Individually, I think it could be
oppressive or empowering.
330
00:18:48,585 --> 00:18:49,545
Collectively,
331
00:18:49,628 --> 00:18:53,132
as something we think it's a good idea
for human beings to generally do,
332
00:18:53,715 --> 00:18:55,384
ideally we need to live in a world
333
00:18:55,467 --> 00:18:59,138
where we don't need to cut up our bodies
to be our best selves.
334
00:18:59,763 --> 00:19:01,140
In regards to my daughter,
335
00:19:01,223 --> 00:19:05,018
I-- I even struggled with telling her
where I was going today,
336
00:19:05,102 --> 00:19:08,105
because I didn't even know
how to explain it to her
337
00:19:08,188 --> 00:19:09,439
without telling her,
338
00:19:09,523 --> 00:19:12,234
"Yeah. My boobs are fake.
I had a breast augmentation."
339
00:19:12,317 --> 00:19:14,236
How do I even explain that to her?
340
00:19:14,319 --> 00:19:17,906
And I don't wanna plant the seed of,
341
00:19:17,990 --> 00:19:20,534
"You need big boobs to be pretty,"
342
00:19:20,617 --> 00:19:23,495
because then
that's just gonna be in her mind,
343
00:19:23,579 --> 00:19:26,665
like, "When I get older,
if my boobs aren't as big as mommy's,
344
00:19:26,748 --> 00:19:29,168
then I need to change that."
345
00:19:29,251 --> 00:19:34,965
I mean if we could get old boobs,
saggy boobs, breastfeeding boobs
346
00:19:35,048 --> 00:19:37,092
and just have them on every bus stop,
347
00:19:37,176 --> 00:19:40,095
we'd quite soon
stop thinking of normal boobs
348
00:19:40,179 --> 00:19:42,848
as these completely pert, round things.
349
00:19:42,931 --> 00:19:45,851
There needs to be less conversations
350
00:19:45,934 --> 00:19:49,563
about the good or the bad
of plastic surgery itself,
351
00:19:49,646 --> 00:19:55,402
and more dialogue about what it means
to be a person in a marginalized body
352
00:19:55,485 --> 00:20:00,657
and why desirability is even so important
to that experience in the first place.
353
00:20:05,037 --> 00:20:07,873
[closing theme music playing]