A plastic surgeon rewrote her risk talk for male patients arriving with app screenshots

Both totals count procedures. A man who has filler three times in a year appears in the minimally invasive tally three times ^[2][3]. The growth figure inherits that property. A 4 percent rise can come from new patients, from existing patients returning more often, or from more line items per visit. The piece does not give the base period, the data source, or the matching rate for women ^[1][22].

She wrote that if she had to pick a single word for the men she sees today, it would be influenced ^[7]. When a patient asks whether taping the mouth shut during sleep or bone crushing works, she counts the question as a good sign, because it shows the patient can spot something too good to be true. Neither practice does anything ^[8].

Looksmaxxing, which she defines as optimizing appearance through any available means, has gained traction among boys and young men ^[25]. The specific harms she now lists belong to practices carried out away from a clinic. Filler injected by anyone who is not a nurse or a doctor can cause permanent blindness ^[14]. Mycobacterial infection from improperly sterilized instruments can mean lifelong antibiotics ^[15]. Testosterone taken young shrinks the testicles, can cause infertility, and can stop growth early ^[17]. Bone crushing does not work, and the transformations posted online are puberty, weight loss, or both ^[16]. People can die from many of the treatments looksmaxxing influencers recommend, she wrote ^[24].

She grants the influencers their premise. They are wrong about the treatments but "correct in their diagnosis: We have built an economy that pays people for how they look," she wrote ^[10]. The evidence she offers for that is thinner than the claim. A reported relationship between higher follower counts, higher attractiveness ratings and likeability is a correlation among things that travel together online, and it does not show that a straighter nose raises anyone's income ^[12]. She also cites a "Zoom boom," which she describes as a statistically significant and sustained increase in facial plastic procedures among people who spend hours looking at their own faces on video calls ^[11]. That is a claim about who books surgery.

The CDC's 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found 40 percent of high school students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 20 percent considering suicide, and nearly 1 in 10 attempting it ^[18]. Those are figures for high school students in general, and she uses them as context for the appearance economy argument ^[23]. Every week she sees teenagers in her clinic whose career goal is to become an influencer ^[21]. She used to tell them, "I really want you to prioritize your education so that you can be financially independent," and it often fell flat ^[20]. One parent told her, "I really don't think he needs this, but I'm here anyway" ^[19].