Jennifer Lawrence, is that you?
In a new story for The Cut, the naturally beautiful “Silver Linings Playbook” actress admitted she had a breast lift, does “baby Botox” and planned to have a facelift in the future.
There was also something striking in the images that accompanied the article. She looked like she had been run through a Kardashian filter. Her lips appeared as plump as slugs, and her eyebrows had migrated an inch from their original home. She was expressionless and flat. And it wasn’t simply because these were still photos. She looked very much the same in a recent “Call Her Daddy” interview.
“I want to be a sexy mom,” she told the magazine. “At drop-off, I want to look like a woman that has her s–t together even when I’ve just woken up and don’t have my s–t together.”
Lawrence isn’t an over-the-hill actress clinging to her youth. She is 36.
And she isn’t some desperate striver who believes that if only her lips were larger, her brows higher or buccal fat vacuumed, she’d finally catch that big break.
Lawrence has an Academy Award and the general goodwill from the industry and public thanks to her talent and quirky personality. She has always embraced her relatable flaws, even famously tripping on her way to accept the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2013.
These interventions aren’t really about fighting Father Time. It’s about fighting genetics and changing the features that make her unique and come alive on screen.
Her transformation and candor about a future new face only underscores what has been happening in our culture. We are sadly losing touch with how a normal human face is meant to look.
Watch a movie from a decade or so ago and actors and actresses actually have real teeth and faces with character and slight imperfections. Now it’s all chicklet veneers, tiny noses out of the same doctor catalog and lips that scream, “I bought these.”
Of course Lawrence isn’t the only member of youngish Hollywood tweaking their looks. Emma Stone is starting to look less sharp and more sanded down. Anne Hathaway’s cheeks are taut as ever, and Kristen Bell’s face is pulled tighter than a West Point Cadet’s bedsheet.
These ladies were never bombshells. Their appeal was that they were the pretty girls next door.
If Lawrence thinks she needs to alter her natural appearance, what does that mean for the average insecure young girl growing up in today’s world with social media reinforcing their need to look and sound a certain way?
Their feeds are filled with influencers and reality stars who all have a derivative face. I see the result of nips, tucks and injections on regular young women walking around New York City. And in the suburbs it’s not uncommon to see ladies with ridiculously fake lips and brows so high one prays they are currently suing their doctor for malpractice.
Thanks to the wide availability of procedures and injections, we’ve become far too casual about plastic surgery. Females have been convinced they need to begin a regimen of preventative Botox in their early 20s. Once that starts, it loosens inhibitions to try other things on the menu. Hey, let’s do a filler here, a lip plumper there. Any insecurity can be fixed, softened or erased completely for a price.
It’s sadly become so normalized.
A few decades ago, the cultural messaging emphasized learning to love the face you’ve been given, which builds character and resilience. It’s also true that plastic surgery was more expensive, more invasive and less accessible back then. Now with many advancements it’s much easier to fix the face you’ve been given, so you can then love it.
It’s pretty dark.
But just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should.
Will modifying your features really lead to self-love? Usually it just leads to fixating on the next “imperfection.”
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