Surgery Degree Zero
Term for the ageless visage created with fillers, Botox, chemical peels, and the like.
Writing for The Guardian, Eva Wiseman pinpointed “the very moment the world first became aware of the ageless, year-zero face“ – as a young starlet appeared during Paris Fashion week 2009:
She had a forehead so taut and shiny it looked like an iPhone 4. Her lips were inflated to the size of a melting Twix, and her cheekbones looked as if they were climbing her jaw in order to dive to their death. Each change to her then 23-year-old face seemed to nod towards youth, but in fact imply age. This isn’t to say she looked old – as she bounced down the catwalk, her hair streaming behind her, she seemed to have transcended age – she looked like lamb dressed as mutton dressed as duck.
Though traditionally cosmetic surgery has been used to make patients look younger, doctors are noticing a trend for women wanting to simply look “done.” Rather than chase youthfulness with a scalpel, some seem to be choosing instead to fix their faces at a certain age (celebrity dermatologist Gervaise Gerstner suggests many women settle for 36) and maintain the look with injectable fillers and cosmetic treatments.
According to Wiseman:
New York plastic surgeon Douglas Steinbrech told W magazine. “There’s this new mentality that if you do not look a little bit fake, then the surgeon hasn’t done his job. This used to be a much more prevalent idea on the west coast, but now you walk up Madison Avenue and you see these young girls with that cloned, cougar-like face. Either they don’t know what they look like, or they want to look like they’ve had something done.”
