Werner Mang has been fulfilling beauty wishes for more than 30 years. But he is sending more and more young patients away, says the head of the Bodensee clinic for plastic surgery in Lindau. “This morning I had a 13-year-old girl here again who wanted Kylie Jenner’s nose,” says the 71-year-old, who was already straightening Götz George’s nose. “This development is sick. Mark Zuckerberg created monsters.”
Photo faces and trimmed bodies
Social media and photo filters as drivers of a new beauty craze among young people? The plastic surgeon Alexander Hilpert also sees this as a dangerous development. “Those who frequently send pictures of themselves also want to look more beautiful,” says the 56-year-old, who practices in Duisburg and Düsseldorf. “That has increased enormously in recent years, these inquiries are now coming in every day.”
The German Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (DGÄPC) does not have reliable figures on this. In its annual statistics for 2020, the association only recorded interventions actually carried out and the motivation for them, but not the rejected inquiries. According to this, patients only presented digitally processed templates of themselves as a goal in 2.3 percent of cases – a decrease of 11.7 percent compared to the previous year.
“The statistics are due to Corona,” says Hilpert. “I am quite certain that these inquiries will increase again.” After all, during the pandemic, young people are even more often out and about in digital space than before. “People there only see nicely morphed models,” emphasizes Hilpert. “And when you imitate dances on TikTok, you often want to look like that too.”
Optimized for social media
According to the JIM study presented at the end of last year, adolescents used Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and Co. more frequently than in the previous year in the 2020 pandemic. The increase was therefore most evident on TikTok: The number of young people who said they used the app at least several times a week rose by 19 percent. The app was particularly popular with 12 to 15 year olds.
Mang and Hilpert emphasize that if you want to look more like the role models there or your own filter selfie, you are sent away again. “But it is clear that they will then go somewhere else,” says Mang. “Unfortunately, they often come back to me when the damage has already occurred.” Mang therefore calls for stricter criteria in the training of aesthetic plastic surgeons.
Lack of qualification
“It’s a wild growth,” says Mang. “It is possible for someone to operate a nose without ever having done it before during their training period.” When looking for a doctor, one should therefore pay attention to the title “plastic surgery” or “plastic surgery”.
Apart from that, there are many specialists from other areas who earn money through cosmetic surgery, says Alexander Hilpert. They are allowed to call themselves cosmetic surgeons because this is not a protected professional title. “According to the law, even non-medical practitioners are allowed to inject wrinkles; the training can also be done online,” says Hilpert. “You have to have an understanding of anatomy, for example, in order not to hit important blood vessels.”
To avoid interventions by unqualified providers, he often recommends young patients to simply come back a few years later, says Hilpert. “Then you also get a small discount.”
Self-examination in the video conference
But adults are also seeing themselves more and more often on their own screen due to the corona pandemic: video conferences have long been part of everyday life for many workers in the home office. According to the DGÄPC, cosmetic surgery in 2020 was noticeably often about changes in the face.
“During the Corona period, many saw themselves at Zoom all the time,” says Hilpert. “That’s why a lot of people come and say they’d like an eyelid operation.” Video conferences showed the age of the participants “relentlessly”, says clinic director Werner Mang.
Information from the DGÄPC indicates that this was also the case in distance learning: 27 percent of the members stated that teachers came to their practice more often than usual in spring 2020. Werner Mang remains cautious about these interventions. The 71-year-old emphasizes that he has never put himself under the knife. “I’m proud of my bags under the eyes.”
(kbe)
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