An Era of Authenticity (or Something Like It)

Celebrities are being praised for openly discussing plastic surgery and Photoshop. Are they raging against a machine they created?

When Kylie Jenner and her mother, Kris, admitted last month that they had gotten plastic surgery, it was hailed by many as the start of a new era in celebrity transparency around beauty.

“445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!!!! silicone!!! garth fisher!!! hope this helps lol,” Kylie Jenner had responded to a fan asking for the exact specifications of her breast augmentation.

The moment — casual, off the cuff, peppered with internet speak and made in the comments of a TikTok — immediately became a hot topic on social media, just as her mother’s discussion of her face lift a few weeks earlier had.

Other celebrities, naturally, jumped on the bandwagon.

Kristin Cavallari, a former star of “The Hills,” shared her own breast implant specifications on Instagram, while the real estate tycoon and “Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran revealed a whole host of procedures she’s had done, including three face lifts, a neck lift and a “lower eyelid skin pinch.”

Last week, Khloé Kardashian admitted that she used to “heavily Photoshop” her photos until she looked like a “cartoon character.”

“There was a time that I was around some people that would make me feel like I needed to,” Ms. Kardashian said on her podcast, “Khloé in Wonderland.” “I also think it was the era, too. I felt like a lot of people were Photoshopping or heavily Photoshopping more than they do now. I do feel like there was a time that we all just got consumed in this filter lifestyle and we couldn’t see ourselves without a filter.”

The beauty standards themselves are inauthentic — that is, unnatural and impossible to attain without surgical or technological intervention — but the open discussion around how to achieve them has been praised as a form of authenticity by fans, many of whom felt they had previously been gaslit by celebrities claiming their perfect forms were the result of diet and exercise.

According to Dr. Kelly Killeen, a plastic surgeon based in Beverly Hills, Calif., the open discussion of plastic surgery has resulted in an uptick in patients asking for the exact same procedures their favorite celebrities have gotten.