By Rosie Wilson
According to a New York surgeon, while people used to cite celebrity body parts as their aspired results, they now want to look like their enhanced selves – and they’re using Instagram filters to gauge the results.
The social platform is well known for promoting ‘selfie’ culture, including filters that can enhance the skin tone, smooth the appearance of the face and find the subject’s most flattering angle.
The claim is substantiated by research from the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, which claims there’s been a 33% rise in procedures driven by self-awareness from social media since 2013.
Dr. Elie Levine, a Plastic Surgeon on the Upper East Side, New York, said: “This is a huge trend. People are bringing in pictures of themselves taken at a favourite angle or filtered, and saying they want to look like that.”
Dr. David Schafer, a midtown Plastic Surgeon also in New York, agrees, and even says he has a request for a ‘social media makeover’ every single day.
“They whip out their cellphones and start flipping through their pictures, saying ‘I want to look like this all the time,’” he said.